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ROBERT E. LEE 

MAN AND SOLDIER 



I ^ 



ROBERT E. LEE 

MAN AND SOLDIER 



BY 

THOMAS NELSON PAGE 

'/ 



Q leiv' iyyeiKov AaKedai/wvlois 6ti rySe 
Kel/xeda toTs Kelvuv prjuaai ireiObj/xvoi. 



WITH PORTRAIT AND MAPS 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1911 



r4L 
.1 



'T 



COPTRiaHT, 1911, BY 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
Published December, 1911 



^1 




©CI.a:;^()<>S92 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

'as gallant and brave an army as ever existed": 

the army of northern virginia: 

on whose imperishable deeds 

and incomparable constancy 

the fame of their old commander 

was founded 



PREFACE ix 

for their courtesy extended me during that expedition 
and for the great aid which I derived from their care- 
ful and thoughtful discussions of Lee's campaigns in 
Virginia. The historical spirit in which these soldiers 
have approached their subject is one I have endeavored 
to emulate, even though I may have done so vainly, 
and is the best assurance that in time a complete his- 
tory of the great war will be written. 

Thos. Nelson Page. 
Washington, 
October, 1911. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Early Life 3 

II. First Service 15 

III. The Choice of Hercules 36 

IV. Resources 67 

V. Lee in West Virginia 80 

VI. The Situation When Lee Took Com- 
mand 122 

VII. Battles Around Richmond .... 145 

VIII. Lee Relieves Richmond 192 

IX. Lee's Audacity — Antietam and Chan- 

cellorsville 215 

X. Fredericksburg 249 

XI. Chancellorsville 264 

XII. Lee's Audacity — Salem Church . . 292 

XIII. Gettysburg 304 

XIV. Autumn of 1863 364 

XV. The Wilderness Campaign .... 388 

XVI. Spottsylvania Court House .... 410 

XVII. South Anna and Second Cold Harbor 424 

XVIII. Lee's Strategy and the First Attack 

ON Petersburg 444 

xi 



Xll 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

XIX. 



XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 



The Siege of Petersburg and Rich- 
mond 

Lee and Grant 

The Last Ditch 

The Retreat to Appomattox . . . 

General Lee and the Confederate 
Government 



XXIV. Lee's Clemency . . . 

XXV. Lee in Defeat .... 

XXVI. After the War . . . 

XXVII. JjEE as College President 

XXVIII. Sources of Character . 



Appendix A 

Lee's order for the battle of Gaines's Mill. 

Appendix B 

Extracts from Letter to Author from General Marcus J. 

Wright. 
Extract ironi Letter to Author from Colonel Thomas L. 

Livermore. 



Appendix C 

Lee's Report of the Gettysburg Campaign. 

Appendix D ■..-.• 

Extract from Letter to Author from Andrew R. Ellerson, 
Esq., of Ellersoh's, Hanover County, Va. 

Appendix E 

Report of the Surrender at Appomattox. 

Index 



467 
488 
516 
545 

580 
617 
636 
642 
660 
684 
695 

698 



703 

714 

716 
721 



LIST OF MAPS 

General Map of Battle-Fields Around Rich- ^ 

MOND At end of book 

FACING 
PAGE 

General Map of the Country Around Manassas 
Junction 210 

The Field of the Antietam 228 

Fredericksburg — Position of Union and Con- 
federate Forces on December 13, 1862 . . . 262 

Union and Confederate Works Around Chan- ^ 

cellorsville 276 

Gettysburg and Vicinity 324 

The Wilderness 398 

Union and Confederate Works Around Spott- 
SYLVANiA Court House 412 

Union and Confederate Works Around Peters- .^ 

burg 468 



INTRODUCTORY 

This study of a great American is not written with the 
expectation or even with the hope that the writer can 
add anything to the fame of Lee; but rather in obe- 
dience to a feehng that as the son of a Confederate 
soldier, as a Southerner, as an American, he, as a writer, 
owes something to himself and to his countrymen which 
he should endeavor to pay, though it may be but a mite 
cast into the Treasury of Abundance. 

The subject is not one to be dealt with in the lan- 
guage of eulogy. To attempt to decorate it with pane- 
gyric would but belittle it. What the writer proposes 
to say will be based upon public records; on the studies 
of those whose authority is unquestioned; or on the tes- 
timony of those personal witnesses who by character 
and opportunity for observation would be held to fur- 
nish evidence by which the gravest concerns of life 
would be decided. 

At the outset I venture to quote the words of the 
Master of Historians, not to express my achievement, 
but my endeavor: 

"With reference to the narrative of events, far 
from permitting myself to derive it from the first 
source that came to hand, I did not even trust my 
own impressions; but it rests partly on what I saw 
myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accu- 



XVI 



INTRODUCTORY 



racy of the report being always tried by the most severe 
and detailed tests possible. 

" My conclusions have cost me some labor from the 
want of coincidence between accounts of the same 
occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising some- 
times from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue 
partiality for one side or the other." ^ 

Tme enough it is, Lee was assailed — and assailed 
with a rancor and persistence which have undoubtedly 
left their deep impression on the minds of a large sec- 
tion of his countrj^men; but, as the years pass by, the 
passions and prejudices which attempted to destroy 
him have been gradually giving place to a juster con- 
ception of the lineaments of Truth. 

Among his warmest admirers to-day are some who 
fought against him. No more appreciative study of 
him has been written than that by Mr. Charles Francis 
Adams, whose breadth, clearness of vision, and classic 
charm as a writer were only equalled by his gallantry 
in the Army of the Potomac, where he won his first 
laurels. 

Unhappily, the world judges mainly by the measure 
of success, and though Time hath his revenges, and 
finally rights many wrongs, the man who fails of an im- 
mediate end appears to the body of his contemporaries, 
and often to the generations following, to be a failure. 
Yet from such seed as this have sprung the richest 
fruits of civilization. In the Divine Economy appears 
a wonderful myster>'. Through all the history' of sub- 
lime endeavor would seem to run the strange truth 

• Thucydidcs' " History of The Peloponnesian War," chap. I. 



INTRODUCTORY xvii 

enunciated by the Divine Master: that he who loses 
his life for the sake of the Truth shall find it. 

But although, as was said by the eloquent Hol- 
combe of Lee just after his death, ''No calumny can 
ever darken his fame, for History has lighted up his 
image with her everlasting lamp," yet after forty years 
there still appears in certain quarters a tendency to 
rank General Lee, as a soldier, among those captains 
who failed. Some historians, looking with narrow vi- 
sion at but one side, and many readers, ignorant of all 
the facts, honestly take this view. A general he was, 
they say, able enough for defence; but he was uni- 
formly defeated when he took the offensive. He failed 
at Antietam; he was defeated at Gettysburg; he 
could not drive Grant out of Virginia; therefore he 
must be classed among captains of the second rank 
only. 

Iteration and reiteration, to the ordinary observer, 
however honest he may be, gather accumulated force 
and oftentimes usurp the place of truth. The public 
has not time, nor does it care, to go deeper than the or- 
dinary presentation of a case. It is possible, therefore, 
that unless the truth be set forth so plainly that it can- 
not be mistaken, this estimate of Lee as a captain may 
in time become established as the general, if not the 
universal, opinion of the public. 

If, however, Lee's reputation becomes established 
as among the second class of captains, rather than as 
among the first, the responsibility for it will rest, not 
upon Northern writers, but upon the Southerners them- 
selves. For the facts are plain. 



xviii INTRODUCTORY 

We of the South have been wont to leave the writing 
of history mainly to others, and it is far from a complete 
excuse that whilst others were writing history we were 
making it. It is as much the duty of a people to dis- 
prove any charge blackening their fame as it is of an 
individual. Indeed, the injury is infinitely more far- 
reaching in the former case than in the latter. 

Lee's character I deem absolutely the fruit of the 
Virginian civilization which existed in times past. No 
drop of blood alien to Virginia coursed in his veins; his 
rearing was wholly within her borders and according 
to the principles of her life. 

Whatever of praise or censure, therefore, shall be 
his must fall fairly on his mother, Virginia, and the 
civilization which existed within her borders. The his- 
tory of Lee is the history of the South during the great- 
est crisis of her existence. For with his history is bound 
up the history of the Army of Northern Virginia, on 
whose imperishable deeds and incomparable constancy 
rests his fame. 

The reputation of the South has suffered because 
we have allowed rhetoric to usurp the place of history. 
We have furnished many orators, but few historians. 
But all history at last must be the work, not of the 
orator, but of the historian. Truth, simply stated, like 
chastity in a woman's face, is its own best advocate; 
its simplest presentation is its strongest proof. 



ROBERT E. LEE 

MAN AND SOLDIER 



{ 



ROBERT E. LEE 

MAN AND SOLDIER 



"A Prince once said of a Monarch slain, 
'Taller he seems in Death.'" 

— Hope. 



CHAPTER I 

EARLY LIFE 

On a plateau about a mile from the south bank of the 
Potomac River, in the old Colonial county of West- 
moreland, in what used to be known as the ''Northern 
Neck," that portion of Virginia which Charles II in 
his heedlessness once undertook to grant to his friends 
and favorites, Culpeper and Arlington, stands a massive 
brick mansion, one of the most impressive piles of 
brick on this continent. Built in the form of a broad 
H, it looks, even in its dilapidation, as though it might 
have been erected by Elizabeth and bombarded by 
Cromwell. It had to be built strong ; for in those 
days the Indians were just across the blue mountains to 
the westward, and roving bands were likely to appear 
at any time, following the broad river in search of 
scalps or booty, and ready to fall on any defenceless 
family in their way. The broad chimneys clustered 



4 ROBERT E. LEE 

above the roof of each wing are said to have been con- 
nected in old times by a paviHon which was used for 
dances and such Uke entertainments. No picture of 
the mansion gives any adequate idea of its chateau- 
Hke massiveness. It was built by Thomas Lee, 
grandson of Richard Lee, the immigrant, who came 
to Virginia about 1641-42, and founded a family 
which has numbered among its members as many men 
of distinction as any family in America. It was 
through him that Charles II, when an exile in Brussels, 
is said to have been offered an asylum and a kingdom 
in Virginia. When the first mansion erected was de- 
stroyed by fire. Queen Anne, in recognition of the ser- 
vices of her faithful counsellor in Virginia, sent over a 
liberal contribution toward its rebuilding. Founded 
about 1725-30, it bears the old English name, Stratford, 
after the English estate of Richard Lee, and for many 
generations, down to the last generation, it was the 
home of the Lees of Virginia. 

This mansion has a unique distinction among his- 
torical houses in this country ; for in one of its chambers 
were born two signers of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence: Richard Henry Lee, who, in obedience to the 
mandate of the Virginia Convention, moved the reso- 
lution in Congress to declare the Colonies free and 
independent States, and Francis Lightfoot Lee, his 
brother. But it has a yet greater distinction. In one 
of its chambers was born, on the 19th of January, 1807, 
Robert E. Lee, whom many students of military his- 
tory believe to have been not only the greatest soldier 
of his time, and, taking all things together, the great- 



EARLY LIFE 5 

est captain of the English-speaking race, but the 
loftiest character of his generation; one rarely equalled, 
and possibly never excelled, in all the annals of the 
human race. 

His reputation as a soldier has been dealt with by 
others much better fitted to speak of it than I; and 
in what I shall have to say as to this I shall often 
follow them, drawing from their studies what seem to 
me the necessary conclusions presented. The cam- 
paigns in which that reputation was achieved are now 
the studies of all military students throughout the 
world, quite as much as are the campaigns of Hannibal 
and Cffisar, of Cromwell and Marlborough, of Napoleon 
and Wellington. 

"According to my notion of military history," says 
Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, "there is as much 
instruction both in strategy and in tactics to be gleaned 
from General Lee's operations of 1862 as there is to be 
found in Napoleon's campaigns of 1796." In recog- 
nition of this fact the United States War College an- 
nually sends an expedition of picked officers to study 
the movements of these campaigns on the fields on 
which he gained his renown. 

Robert Edward Lee was the fourth son of General 
Henry Lee, known in history as "Light Horse Harry" 
Lee (who in his youth had been the gallant young 
commander of the "Partisan Legion"), and the third 
son of Anne Carter, of Shirley, his second wife, a pious 
and gracious representative of the old Virginia family 
whose home still stands in simple dignity upon the 
banks of the James, and has been far-famed for gen- 



6 ROBERT E. LEE 

erations as one of the best-known seats of the old 
Virginia hospitahty. His three older brothers were 
Henry (who was the only child of ''Light Horse Harry" 
Lee's first marriage), Charles Carter, and Sidney 
Smith, all of whom were unusually clever men. His 
two sisters were Mildred and Anne. In his veins 
flowed the best blood of the gentry of the Old Dominion, 
and, for that matter, of England, and surrounding him 
from his earliest childhood were the best traditions 
of the old Virginia life. Amid these, and these alone, 
he grew to manhood. On both sides of his house his 
ancestors for generations had been councillors and 
governors of Virginia, and had contributed their full 
share toward Virginia's greatness. 

Richard Lee, '' the immigrant," was a scion of an 
old family, ancient enough to have fought at Hastings 
and to have followed Richard of the Lion Heart to 
the Holy Land.^ On this side of the water they had 
ever stood among the highest. The history of no two 
families was more indissolubly bound up with the 
history of Virginia than that of the Lees and the Car- 
ters. Thus, Lee was essentially the type of the cava- 
lier of the Old Dominion, to whom she owed so much 
of her glory. Like Sir Walter Raleigh, he could number 
a hundred gentlemen among his kindred, and, even at 
his greatest, he was in character the type of his order. 

In the youth of young Henry Lee, Princeton was the 
most popular of the colleges with the Virginians, and 
Henry Lee was a student at Princeton when the Revo- 
lutionary War broke out. Nearly all the young men 

* "Lee of Virginia," by Edmund I. Lee. 



EARLY LIFE 7 

of his age were deeply interested in the matters which 
brought on the war, and probably because of the lead- 
ing part Virginia took in the movement for independ- 
ence, and possibly because of the prominent part that 
his kinsmen took in Virginia, no sooner had war begun, 
with the battle of Lexington, than young Henry Lee 
left his studies and joined the army. He was com- 
missioned a captain at the age of nineteen, and by his 
soldierly qualities soon became a marked man. He 
rendered such signal service in the early campaigns of 
the war, and showed such courage, ability and dash, 
that he early became a favorite with Washington, and, 
as was stated by his famous son long afterward, "in 
the difficult and critical operations in Pennsylvania, 
New Jersey, and New York, from 1777 to 1780, inclu- 
sive, he was always placed near the enemy, intrusted 
with the command of outposts, the superintendence of 
scouts, and that kind of service which requires unusual 
qualities of resourcefulness and self-reliance." ^ 

His activity and daring in scouting near the enemy 
drew their attention, and they set to work to capture 
him. Knowing that he was quartered about six miles 
below Valley Forge, a surprise was attempted by them. 
A body of two hundred horse set out one night, and 
having taken a roundabout route, they eluded his out- 
posts and reached about daybreak the house where he 
was quartered. In the house were only eight men: 
Captain Lee, Lieutenant Lindsay, Major Gemieson, a 
corporal, and four men. Though surprised, the soldiers 
in the house, instead of surrendering as they were ex- 

' "Memoirs of the War of 7G," by H. Lee, p. 16. 



8 ROBERT E. LEE 

pected to do, under Lee's direction barricaded the doors 
and fought the assailants off, forcing them finally to 
retire with a loss of five men killed and a number more 
wounded. Then, as they were attempting to carry off 
the horses of the party, Lee hurried the departure of the 
enemy by shouting to his men to fire away, as the infan- 
try were coming, and tliey would bag them all. As soon 
as they retired he sallied forth, got his men to horse, 
and pursued the English force to their main body. 

For this exploit, together with his services in the 
campaign before it, which Washington highly com- 
mended. Congress promoted Captain Lee to the rank 
of major, and gave him an independent command, 
known as a "partisan corps," composed first of two, 
and later of three troops of horse. 

That summer he took part in the capture of Stony 
Point, which gave Mad Anthony Wayne his fame, and 
a little later he planned and executed the surprise and 
capture of Paulus Hook under the nose of the British 
warships and the garrisons of the New York forts. 
For this exploit Congress again signally honored him — 
thanking him publicly, and striking a medal in his 
honor, a tribute paid to no other officer below the 
rank of general during the war.* 

Wlien the chief seat of war was transferred to the South, 
toward the end of 1780, Major Lee moved to join the 
Southern army, opposing Cornwallis in South Carolina, 
and Congress in recognition of his distinguished ser- 
vices made him, on Washington's recommendation, a 
lieutenant-colonel. He took part in all the battles of 

• Leo's "Memoirs of the War of 70," p. 23. 



EARLY LIFE 9 

the Southern campaign, and rendered such service 
that, when broken in health and partly because dis- 
appointed of a reward which he thought due him he 
retired about February, 1782, General Greene wrote of 
him to the president of Congress in the following warm 
terms: "Lieutenant-Colonel Lee retired for a time for 
the recovery of his health. I am more indebted to 
this officer than to any other for the advantages gained 
over the enemy in the operations of the last campaign, 
and should be wanting in gratitude not to acknowl- 
edge the importance of his services, a detail of which 
is his best panegyric." ^ 

Later on Colonel Lee became a member of Congress, 
and was so noted for his eloquence that when in 1799 
Washington died, he was selected by Congress to deliver 
the official eulogy on his old commander and life-long 
friend. Subsequently he became the governor of Vir- 
ginia, and served as such for three terms, and when the 
rebellion broke out in Pennsylvania, he was chosen 
to command the troops mobilized for its suppression. 

Thus, the blood that coursed through the veins of 
Robert E. Lee was that of a soldier. 

It has been well said that knowledge of a man's 
ideals is the key to his character. Tell us his ideals 
and we c^n tell you what manner of man he is. Lee's 
ideal character was close at hand from his earliest boy- 
hood. His earliest days were spent in a region filled 
with traditions of him who, having consecrated his 
life to duty, had with the fame of a great soldier at- 
tained such a standard of virtue that if we would 

' Lee's "Memoirs of the War of 76," p. 41. 



10 ROBERT E. LEE 

liken him to other governoi-s we must go back to 
Marcus AureHus, to St. Louis and to WiUiam the 
Silent. 

Not far from Stratford, within an easy ride, in the 
same old colonial county of Westmoreland, on the 
bank of the noble river whose broad waters reflect 
the arching sky, spanning Virginia and Maryland, 
was Wakefield, the plantation which had the distinc- 
tion of having given birth to the Father of his 
Country. Thus, on this neighborhood, the splendor 
of the evening of his noble life, just closed, had shed 
a peculiar glory. And not a great way off, in a neigh- 
boring county on the banks of the same river, was the 
home of his manhood, where in majestic simplicity his 
ashes repose, making Mount Vernon a shrine for lovers 
)f liberty of every age and every clime. 

On the wall at Shirley, Lee's mother's home, among 
the portraits of the Carters hangs a full-length portrait 
of Washington, in a general's uniform, given by him 
to General Nelson, who gave it to his daughter, Mrs. 
Carter. Thus, in both his ancestral homes the boy 
from his cradle found an atmosphere redolent at once 
of the greatness of Virginia's past and of the memory 
of the preserver of his countr}^ 

It was Lee's own father, the gallant and gifted 
"Light Horse Harry" Lee, who, as eloquent in debate 
as he had been eager in battle, having, as stated, been 
selected by Congress to deliver the memorial address 
on Washington, had coined the golden phrase which, 
reaching the heart of America, has become his epitaph 
and declared him by the unanimous voice of a grate- 



EARLY LIFE 11 

ful people, "First in war, first in peace, and first in 
the hearts of his countrymen." 

How passionately the memory of ''Light Horse 
Harry" Lee was revered by his sons we know, not 
only from the life of Robert E. Lee, himself, but from 
that most caustic of American philippics, the ''Obser- 
vations on the Writings of Thomas Jefferson, with 
Particular Reference to the Attacks they contain on 
the Memory of the late General Henry Lee, in a series 
of Letters by Henry Lee of Virginia." 

Mr. Jefferson, with all his prestige and genius, had 
found a match when he aroused "Black Harry" Lee 
by a charge of ingratitude on the part of his father to 
the adored Washington. In no family throughout Vir- 
ginia was Washington's name more revered than among 
the Lees, who were bound to him by every tie of grati- 
tude, of sentiment, and of devotion. 

Thus, the impress of the character of Washington 
was natural on the plastic and serious mind of the 
thoughtful son of "Light Horse Harry." 

One familiar with the life of Lee cannot help noting 
the strong resemblance of his character in its strength, 
its poise, its rounded completeness to that of Wash- 
ington, or fail to mark what influence the life of Wash- 
ington had on the life of Lee. The stamp appears upon 
it from his boyhood, and grows more plain as his years 
progress. 

Just when the youth definitely set before himself the 
character of Washington we may not know; but it 
must have been at an early date. The famous story 
of the sturdy little lad and the cherry-tree must have 



12 ROBERT E. LEE 

been well known to young Lee from his earliest boy- 
hood, for it was floating about that region when Parson 
Weems came across it as a neighborhood tradition, and 
made it a part of our literature/ It has become the 
fashion to deride such anecdotes, but this much, at 
least, may be said of this story, that however it may 
rest solely on the authority of the simple, itinerant 
preacher, it is absolutely characteristic of Washington, 
and it is equally characteristic of him who since his 
time most nearly resembled him. 

However this was, the lad grew up amid the tradi- 
tions of that greatest of great men, whose life he so 
manifestly takes as his model, and with whose fame 
his own fame was to be so closely allied in the minds 
and hearts of the people of the South. 

Like Washington, Robert E. Lee became an orphan 
at an early age, his father having been mortally injured 
in an election riot in Baltimore, and dying when the 
lad was only eleven years old, and, like Washington, Lee 
was brought up by a devoted mother, the gentle and 
pious Anne Carter, of Shirley, a representative, as al- 
ready stated, of one of the old families of "Tidewater" 
Virginia, and a descendant of Robert Carter, known as 
"King Carter," equally because of his great possessions, 
his dominant character, and his high position in the 
colony. Through his mother, as through his father, 
Lee was related to most of the families of distinction in 

• A Japanese oflScer, a military attach<S at Washington, related to 
the writer that when he was a boy in a hill-town of Japan, where his 
father was an officer of one of the old Samurai, his mother told him the 
story of George Washington and the cherry-tree and tried to impress 
on him the lessons of truth. 



EARLY LIFE 13 

the Old Dominion, and, by at least one strain of blood, 
to Washington himself. 

Early in Lee 's life his father and mother moved from 
Stratford to Alexandria, one of the two or three Vir- 
ginia towns that were homes of the gentry, and his boy- 
hood was pmssed in the old town that was redolent of 
the memory of Washington. He worshipped in old 
Christ Church, the same church in which Washington 
had been a pew-holder, and he was a frequent visitor 
both at the,' noble mansion on the banks of the Potomac 
where the !^ather of his Country had made his home 
and at tha.lt one where lived the Custises, the descend- 
ants ancli representatives of his adopted son, which was 
to berjbme Lee's own home in the future. 

S-vprung from such stock and nurtured on such tra- 
ditions, the lad soon gave evidence of the character 
that was to place him next to his model. Little is re- 
corded of his childhood beyond the fact of his devotion 
to his mother and his sisters, and his attention to his 
duties. Both of his older brothers were very clever, 
and it is possible that the sturdy Robert was over- 
shadowed by them. "Robert, who was always good/' 
wrote his father of him from the West Indies, where he 
had gone hoping to restore his health after his injury, 
"will be confirmed in his happy turn of mind by his 
ever- watchful and affectionate mother." This proph- 
ecy was amply fulfilled. It is recorded that "his 
mother taught him in his childhood to practise self- 
denial and self-control, as well as the strictest economy 
in all financial concerns." To his mother he was ever 
a dutiful and devoted son, and we have a glimpse of 




14 ROBERT E. LEE 

him, none the less interesting and significant because 
it is casual, leaving his playfellows at their sport to go 
and take his invalid mother driving in the old family 
carriage, where he was careful to fasten the curtains 
and close up the cracks with newspapers to keep the 
draughts from her, and using all his poweijs to enter- 
tain and divert her. The ties between theitn were ever 
peculiarly close, and more than one of his wousins have 
recorded that what impressed them most in jtheir youth 
was "Robert's devotion to his mother." rYou have 
been both son and daughter to me," wrote liis mother, 
in her loneliness, after he had left home for \\^est Point. 
''The other boys used to drink from the glasse(,s of the 
gentleman," said one of the family; "but Robert ^never 
would join them. He was different." 

A light is thrown on his character at this time in c,% 
pleasant reference to his boyhood made by himself long 
afterward, in writing of his youngest son, then a lad, 
who was going to the Virginia Springs as escort to his 
mother and sister. "A young gentleman," he says, 
"who has read Virgil must surely be competent to take 
care of two ladies; for before I had advanced that far 
I was my mother's outdoor agent and confidential 
messenger." * He might readily have said more; for 
it is related that he was known from his boyhood for 
his devoted attention to his mother, and that "in her 
last illness he mixed every dose of medicine which she 
took," and nursed her both night and day. 

» Letter of June 25, 1857. 



CHAPTER II 
FIRST SERVICE 

Young Lee selected at an early age the military pro- 
fession, which had given his father and his great proto- 
type their fame. During his early boyhood occurred 
the capture of Washington city and the destruction of 
the Capitol and the White House by the British troops, 
and it has been suggested that this may have turned 
his mind toward the army. But this was not needed. 
It was the profession to which all young men of spirit 
turned. It was in the blood. And young Lee was 
the son of him of whom General Charles Lee, himself 
an accomplished soldier, had said, that "he seemed to 
have come a soldier from his mother's womb," a bit 
of characterization which this soldier's distinguished 
son was to quote with filial satisfaction when, after he 
himself had become possibly the most famous soldier 
of his time, he wrote his father's biography. He was, 
wrote one of his cousins, "most anxious to go to West 
Point, both to relieve his mother and to have a mili- 
tary education." He had gone to school at the Alex- 
andria Academy to a Mr. Leary, and with a view to 
preparing himself for West Point he now went for a 
time to the school of a well-known teacher, Mr. Hal- 
lowell. Here, according to his old master, he was 

15 



16 ROBERT E. LEE 

noted for his attention to his duties and his perfect 
recitations. "His specialty," adds the old teacher, 
'Svas finishing up," and he records that even the 
diagrams in conic sections which he drew on a slate 
were as carefully drawn and finished as if he had ex- 
pected them to be engraved. At the proper time, 
1825, when he was eighteen years of age, he was en- 
tered as a cadet among Virginia's representatives at 
the military academy of the country, having, it is said, 
received his appointment through Andrew Jackson, 
then a senator from Tennessee, to whom he applied in 
person. And there is a tradition that the hero of New 
Orleans was much impressed at the interview between 
them, with the frank and sturdy youth who applied for 
the appointment. At the academy, as in the case of 
young Bonaparte, those soldierly qualities which were 
to bring him later so great a measure of fame were ap- 
parent from the first ; and he bore off the highest honor 
that a cadet can secure — the coveted cadet-adjutancy 
of the corps. Here, too, he gave evidence of the char- 
acter that was to prove his most distinguished attribute, 
and he graduated second in his class of forty-six, but 
with the extraordinary distinction of not having re- 
ceived a demerit. Thus early his solid character mani- 
fested itself. ''Even at West Point," says Holcombe, 
''the solid and lofty qualities of the young cadet were 
remarked on as bearing a resemblance to those of 
Washington." 

The impress of his character was already becoming 
stamped upon his countenance. One who knew him 
about this time records that as she observed his face 



FIRST SERVICE 17 

in repose while he read to the assembled family circle, 
or sat in church, the reflection crossed her mind that he 
looked more like a great man than any one she had 
ever seen. 

Among his classmates and fellow students at West 
Point were many of those men whom he was afterward 
to serve with or against in the great Civil War, and 
doubtless a part of his extraordinary success in that 
Homeric contest was due to the accurate gauge which 
he formed, in his youth or a little later in Mexico, of 
their abilities and character. Indeed, as may be 
shown, this was made almost plainly manifest in his 
dealings in at least three great campaigns of the war: 
that in which he confronted the over-prudent McClellan 
and defeated him, and those in which he balked and 
routed the vainglorious Pope and Hooker. 

Here is a picture of him at this time from the pen 
of one who knew and loved him all his life, and had 
cause to know and love him as a true friend and faith- 
ful comrade — his old classmate and comrade-in-arms, 
Joseph E. Johnston. They had, as he states, entered 
the military academy together as classmates, and 
formed there a friendship never impaired, a friendship 
that was hereditary, as Johnston's father had served 
under Lee's father in the celebrated Lee Legion during 
the Revolutionary War. 

"We had," says General Johnston, "the same inti- 
mate associates, who thought as I did, that no other 
youth or man so united the qualities that win warm 
friendship and command high respect. For he was 
full of sympathy and kindness, genial and fond of gay 



18 ROBERT E. LEE 

conversation, and even of fun, while his correctness of 
demeanor and attention to all duties, personal and 
official, and a dignity as much a part of himself as the 
elegance of his person, gave him a superiority that every 
one acknowledged in his heart. He was the only one 
of all the men I have known that could laugh at the 
faults and follies of his friends in such a manner as to 
make them ashamed without touching their affection 
for him, and to confirm their respect and sense of his 
superiority." He mentions, as an instance of the depth 
of his s^Tnpathy, an occurrence which took place the 
morning after a battle in Mexico, in which he had lost 
a cherished young relative. Lee, meeting him and 
seeing the grief in his face, burst into tears and soothed 
him with a sympathy as tender, declared the veteran 
long years after, ''as his lovely wife would have done." 

Small wonder that the soldiers who followed Lee 
faced death with a devotion that was wellnigh with- 
out a parallel. 

Still influenced in part, perhaps, by his worship for 
his great hero, the young officer chose as the partner 
of his life his old playmate, Miss Mary Parke Custis, 
the granddaughter of Washington's stepson, the sur- 
viving representative of Washington. It was an early 
love affair, and, as such usually resulted in Virginia, 
proved one of the happiest of marriages. The mar- 
riage ceremony took place in the old drawing-room at 
Arlington, on the 30th of June, 1831, and was per- 
formed by the Rev. Dr. William Meade, afterward 
bishop of Virginia. Mrs. Lee was the daughter and 
heiress of George W. Parke Custis, while Lieutenant 



FIRST SERVICE 19 

Lee was poor; but such was her pride in her husband, 
and her sense of what was his due, that on her mar- 
riage to him she determined to live on her husband's 
income as a Heutenant, and for some time she thus 
hved/ It was a fitting training for the hardships she 
was called on to face, when her husband, as com- 
mander-in-chief of the Confederate armies, deemed 
himself happy to be able to send her one nearly dried-up 
lemon. Their domestic life was one of ideal devotion 
and happiness. Should we seek through all the an- 
nals of time for an illustration of the best that exists 
in family life, we need not go further to find the 
perfection and refinement of elegance and of purity 
than that stately mansion, the home of Lee, which 
from the wooded heights of Arlington looks down upon 
the city of Washington, and has by a strange fate 
become the last resting-place of many of those whose 
chief renown has been that they fought bravely against 
Lee. Seven children were born to him, all of whom 
grew up, and two of whom, like their father, adopted 
the profession of arms, and rose to the distinguished 
rank of major-general in the Confederate army. 

With the distinction of such a high graduation as 
his, young Lee was, of course, assigned to the En- 
gineers, that corps of intellectual aristocracy from 
which came, with the notable exceptions of Grant and 
Jackson, nearly all the officers who attained high rank 
during the war. His first service was in Virginia, 
where he was engaged on sea-coast defences, an ex- 

* This fact was stated to the writer by the wife of General William 
N. Pendleton, Mrs. Lee's close neighbor and friend. 



20 ROBERT E. LEE 

perience which was to bear rich fruit later on when he 
was called to construct the coast defences of the Caro- 
linas, and rendered them impregnable against attack 
by sea. He was stationed at Fortress Monroe when 
occurred in a neighboring county the bloody negro 
uprising known as the "Nat Turner Rebellion/' which 
thrilled Virginia as thirty years later thrilled her the 
yet more perilous ''John Brown Raid/' which Lee was 
sent to quell, and quelled. Lee's letters to his wife 
touching this episode, while self-contained as was his 
wont, show the deep gravity with which he regarded 
this ferocious outbreak. Doubtless it also bore its part 
in bringing his mind to its definite conclusions against 
slavery, and his conviction that the presence of the 
colored race was an incalculable misfortune to a State. 
In 1834 he was assigned to service in Washington, as 
assistant to the chief engineer of the army. He was 
promoted to the rank of first lieutenant in 1836, and 
in 1838 was promoted to the rank of captain. During 
this service he resided at Arlington, and took his midday 
meal at a boarding-house kept by a Mrs. Ulrich, on the 
site of Riggs's Hotel, which was so popular with the 
army officers that it was known as ''The Mess." Here 
he met many of the leading public men of the day, on 
all of whom he made a deep impression. "No one was 
ever jealous of him," records one of his old comrades, 
Colonel McComb; "all delighted to do him honor." 

His early manhood was devoted with unremitting 
care to his profession, wherein he made, while still a 
young man, a reputation for ability of so high an order, 
and for such devotion to duty, that when the Missis- 



FIRST SERVICE 21 

sippi, owing to a gradual change in its banks, threat- 
ened the city of St. Louis, General Scott, having been 
appealed to to lend his aid to prevent so dire a calam- 
ity, said he knew of but one man who was equal to 
the task, Brevet Captain Lee. "He is young," he 
wrote, ''but if the work can be done, he can do it." 
The city government, it is said, impatient at the 
young engineer's methodical way, withdrew the ap- 
propriation for the work; but he went on quietly, 
with the comment : "They can do as they like with their 
own, but I was sent here to do certain work, and I shall 
do it." And he did it. Feeling in the city ran high, 
riots broke out, and it is said that cannon were placed 
in position to fire on his working force; but he kept 
calmly on to the end. The work he wrought there 
stands to-day — the bulwark of the great city which has 
so recently invited America and the nations of the 
world within her gates. His service in 1837 in sur- 
veying the upper Mississippi and opening it so as to 
render it navigable is not generally known ; yet it pro- 
vided a clear water-way for the great region of the 
North-west, and opened it for the immigration which 
has since made it one of the most important sections 
of the country. And Lee's recommendations led to 
the great conception of the present system of improve- 
ment of internal water-ways, and his method was the 
forerunner of the Eads system of jetties, by which the 
Mississippi River has been preserved as the midland 
water-way of the nation. 

Referring to this period, one of his old comrades, 
who later served against him. General Meigs, says of 



22 ROBERT E. LEE 

him: "He was a man tlicn in the vigor of youthful 
strength, with a noble and commanding presence, and 
an admirable, graceful, and athletic figure. He was 
one with whom nobody ever wished or ventured to 
take a liberty, though kind and generous to his sub- 
ordinates, admired of all women, and respected of all 
men. He was the model of a soldier, and the beau 
ideal of a Christian man." Such is the picture of 
Robert E. Lee at the age of thirty, dra^vn by one who 
was arrayed against him in the fierce 'sixties, but who 
honored him throughout all. 

In 1842 Lee was assigned to duty at Fort Hamilton, 
where for several years he was engaged in improving 
the defences of New York harbor. Two years later 
he was appointed on the Board of Visitors of the 
United States Military Academy, and his efficient ser- 
vices thereon prepared him for the position of super- 
intendent of the Academy later on. 

The Mexican War was the training ground of most 
of those who fought with distinction in the later and 
more terrible strife of the Civil War, and many of the 
greatest campaigns and fiercest battles of that war were 
planned and fought with a science learned upon the pam- 
pas and amid the mountains of Mexico. Lee, Jackson, 
Davis, Johnston, Beauregard, McClellan, Grant, Thomas, 
Sumner, all won their spurs in Mexico. During the 
Mexican War, Lee, starting in as an engineer officer 
on the staff of General Wool, achieved more renown 
than any other soldier of his rank, and possibly more 
than any other officer in the army of invasion except 
the commander-in-chief. He became General Scott's 



FIRST SERVICE 23 

chief of staff, and between the two was cemented a 
friendship which even the Civil War could not destroy. 
Without going fully into the details of his distin- 
guished services there, which kept him ever at the cru- 
cial point, it may be said that they led General Scott 
to declare, long afterward, that he was the "very 
best soldier he ever saw in the field." His scouts 
and reconnoissances at Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churu- 
busco, and Chapultepec brought him the brevets of 
major at Cerro Gordo, April 18, 1847, of lieutenant- 
colonel at Contreras and Churubusco, and of colonel 
at Chapultepec, September 13. His first marked dis- 
tinction was won by a reconnoissance made at night 
with a single guide, a Mexican, whom he compelled to 
serve at the muzzle of the pistol, wherein he ascertained 
the falsity of a report that Santa Anna's army had 
crossed the mountains and lay in their front. Their 
tents, it was said, whitened the mountain side. He 
galloped forward alone into the hills, and discovered 
that the white tents were flocks of sheep. This distinc- 
tion greatly increased that which he had already won by 
work at Vera Cruz, by which that strategic point, pro- 
tected, as it was believed, by impregnable defences, 
was captured. Here on the landing of General Scott's 
army on the 9th of March, Lee was placed in charge of 
the establishment of batteries and other details of the 
siege, and was "favorably mentioned" by the com- 
manding general for his valuable services. Lee him- 
self related his anxiety for his brother, who com- 
manded a detachment of seamen in the trenches, and 
his relief at seeing his white teeth shining through the 



24 ROBERT E. LEE 

smoke. But this, as notable as it was, was as far ex- 
celled by his services at Cerro Gordo as that was in 
turn by his work at Contreras. At Cerro Gordo, 
where Santa Anna with 13,000 troops and 42 guns, 
posted in a pass, barred the way in an apparently im- 
pregnable position, Lee discovered a mountain pass, 
and having in person led Twigg's division to the point 
for assault in front, and having worked all night post- 
ing batteries, at dawn next morning led Riley's brigade 
up the mountains in the turning movement, which 
forced Santa Anna from his stronghold. At Con- 
treras again he showed the divinely given endowments 
on which his future fame was to rest. 

At Contreras the army of invasion found itself in 
danger of being balked almost at the gates of the capital, 
and Lee's ability shone forth even more brilliantly than 
at Cerro Gordo. The defences of the city of Mexico on 
the eastward appeared impregnable, while an attack 
from the south, where the approach was by nature of 
the ground less difficult, was rendered apparently al- 
most as impossible by powerful batteries constructed 
at San Antonio Hill, commanding the only avenue 
of approach — the road which wound between Lake 
Chalco, with its deep morass on one side and impass- 
able lava beds on the other. Lee, by careful rccon- 
noissance, discovered a mule-trail over the Pedregal, 
as this wild and broken tract of petrified lava was 
termed, and this trail having been opened sufficiently 
to admit of the passage of troops, though with diffi- 
culty and danger, he conducted over it the com- 
mands of Generals Pillow and Worth, and the village 



FIRST SERVICE 25 

of Contreras was seized and held till night against all 
assaults of the enemy. The position of the Ameri- 
can troops, however, was one of extreme peril, as it 
was known that heavy reinforcements were being 
rushed forward by the Mexicans, and at a council of 
war it was decided to advance before dawn rather 
than await attack from the Mexican forces. It be- 
came necessary to inform General Scott of the situa- 
tion, and Captain Lee volunteered for the perilous 
service. He accordingly set out in the darkness and 
alone, and in the midst of a furious tropical storm 
he made his way back across the lava beds infested 
by bands of Mexicans, advised the commander-in- 
chief of the proposed movement, and having secured 
his co-operation, returned across the Pedregal in time 
to assist in the assault, which forced the Mexicans to 
abandon their position and opened the way to Churu- 
busco, Molino del Rey, and Chapultepec, and finally 
led to the occupation of the capital and the close of 
the war. General Scott, in his report, stated that 
seven officers had been sent by him on this reconnois- 
sance, but all returned, and that Lee was the only 
man who got through. 

This act of Lee's was, declared Scott, "the greatest 
feat of physical and moral courage performed by any 
individual, to my knowledge, pending the campaign." 

The story is well known of his devotion to duty 
while in Mexico. On one occasion, after the capture 
of the city, the officers gave a banquet, and when Lee 
did not appear, Magruder sought him, and found him 
hard at work on a map which he conceived it his duty 



26 ROBERT E. LEE 

to prepare without delay. If he was, as Scott declared 
him, "as daring as laborious," also he was ''as laborious 
as daring." 

The "gallantry and good conduct," the "invalua- 
ble services," "the intrepid coolness and gallantry of 
Captain Lee of the Engineers," of "Captain Lee, so 
constantly distinguished," are in all the despatches of all 
the battles of the war, and Lee came out of this war 
with such a reputation for ability that his old com- 
mander, Scott, declared to General Preston, that he 
was "the greatest living soldier in America." Indeed, 
Scott, with prescient vision, declared his opinion that 
he was "the greatest soldier now living in the world." 
"If I were on my death-bed to-morrow," he said to 
General Preston, long before the breaking out of the 
war, "and the President of the United States should 
tell me that a great battle was to be fought for the 
liberty or slavery of the country, and asked my judg- 
ment as to the ability of a commander, I would say 
with my dying breath, 'Let it be Robert E. Lee.' " 

To Reverdy Johnson, Scott said that his success in 
Mexico "was largely due to the skill, valor, and un- 
daunted energy of Robert E. Lee." Lee himself, how- 
ever, declared that it was General Scott's stout heart 
and military skill which overcame all obstacles, and, 
while others croaked, pushed the campaign through 
to final success. The delay in negotiating the treaty 
of peace after the fall of the city of Mexico seems to 
have irked him, and he writes privately: "I might 
make a rough diplomatist, but a tolerable quick one." 
Soon after the capture of the Mexican capital, he, with 



FIRST SERVICE 27 

characteristic modesty, wrote the following letter in 
reply to a letter from his wife's father, Mr. Custis, 
who had shown concern lest he should not be prop- 
erly advanced on the close of hostilities. 

City of Mexico, April 8, 1848. 
... I hope my friends will give themselves no an- 
noyance on my account, or any concern about the dis- 
tribution of favors. I know how those things are 
awarded at Washington, and how the President will 
be besieged by clamorous claimants. I do not wish 
to be among them. Such as he can conscientiously 
bestow, I shall gratefully receive, and have no doubt 
that those will exceed my deserts. . . . 

Certain it is that Lee came out of the Mexican War 
with more distinction than any other subordinate 
officer. And it was the opinion of his comrades that 
"all the compliments won by him were deserved." 
That ''he was active, untiring, skilful, courageous, and 
of good judgment" is the verdict they gave. One 
other characteristic of his is mentioned by an old com- 
rade. "He was conspicuous ... for never having 
uttered a wofd among his most intimate associates 
that might not have been spoken in the presence of 
the most refined woman." 

The scope of this volume does not admit of a de- 
tailed account of the years that intervened between 
the close of the Mexican War and the outbreak of the 
great Civil War, although it was in these years of devo- 
tion to duty, often in the form of dull routine, that 
Lee's powers reached their maturity. 



28 ROBERT E. LEE 

During the period following the Mexican War Lee 
was engaged for a time in constructing the defences of 
Baltimore. Then he was, in 1852, assigned to duty as 
superintendent of the United States Military Academy 
at West Point, where he was to come to know and 
gauge many of the young officers who, a decade later, 
fought under or against him. Three years later he was 
assigned to active duty on the south-western frontier 
as lieutenant-colonel of one of the two regiments of 
cavalry which Mr. Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of 
War, had organized on the recommendation of General 
Scott, and made a separate branch of the service.^ To 
the Second Cavalry was assigned the duty of guarding 
the south-western frontier and preventing or punish- 
ing the depredations of the Indians, and Lee applied 
himself to this work with characteristic zeal and pa- 
tience. He speaks of the Indians' expeditions as "a 
cloak to cover all their thefts and murders," and 
thinks "the poor creatures" are "not worth the trouble 
they give to man and horse." He soon rose to the rank 
of colonel of cavalry, a position which a great critic 
of war has asserted to be the best of all training- 
schools for a great captain, and he h§ld tliis rank 
when, having been brought to Washington to revise 
the tactics of the army, he was unexpectedly called 
on in the summer of 1859 to take charge of the force 
of marines sent to Harper's Ferry to capture John 
Brown and his followers in their crazy and murder- 

' Of these regiments E. V. Sumner was colonel of the first and Joseph 
E. Johnston was lieutenant-colonel, and Albert Sidney Johnston was 
colonel of the second, with Lee as his lieutenant-colonel. 



FIRST SERVICE 29 

ous invasion of Virginia, with the design of starting a 
servile war which should lead to the negroes achieving 
their emancipation. This duty he performed promptly 
and efficiently. It was a delicate position. Virginia 
was in a tumult of rage and excitement over the bold 
attempt to arouse within her borders a servile insur- 
rection, which meant putting her women and children 
to the sword. It was an armed invasion, and the 
respective claims of authority had to be recognized. 
There was grave danger of a conflict of authority be- 
tween the State and the Federal powers. He met 
the situation with promptitude and wisdom. The 
murderous fanatic, Brown, was captured after a 
brief resistance, and was duly tried and executed by 
the civil authorities. It is an interesting fact that 
Lee's aide on this occasion was a young lieutenant, 
J. E. B. Stuart, who a few years later was to become 
his cavalry commander and achieve at a bound a 
world-wide fame. It is also an interesting fact that 
at this time he had one of his aides make a map for 
him of Harper's Ferry and the Maryland Heights 
opposite. 

Though a strict disciplinarian, he was greatly ad- 
mired by his men. Long afterward, when he was a 
defeated general on parole, without means, his every 
act and word watched by enemies thirsting for his 
blood, one of the men he had commanded in the 
Second Cavalry, but who had fought in the Union army 
throughout the war, called at his house in Richmond 
with a basket of provisions for his old commander, 
having heard that he was in want, and when he saw 



30 ROBERT E. LEE 

him he seized him in his arms and kissed him. Of this 
regiment, Long speaks with pride: "As a proof of the 
superiority of its officers," he states, "it may be said 
that this regiment turned out during the war more 
distinguished men than any other regiment in the 
army. Besides Johnston, Lee, Hardee, and Thomas, 
it furnished Van Dorn, Pahner, Hood, Fitz Lee, 
Stoneman, Kirby Smith, Field, and others." 

A Hght is thrown on his character in the letters he 
wrote about and to his children during his long ab- 
sences from home on duty in Mexico and in the West. 
And it is one of the pathetic elements in the history of 
this loving and tender father that, with a nature which 
would have revelled in the joys of domestic life, he 
should have been called by duty to spend so large a 
part of his time away from home that on his return he 
did not know his own child. 

In October, 1857, on the death of his wife's father, 
he came to Arlington to settle up his estate, and it is 
said that on his next visit to Virginia, about the time 
of the John Brown Raid, he was enjoying the second 
leave of absence that he had had since joining the ser- 
vice, over thirty years before. It was a delightful res- 
pite from the exactions of army life on the frontier. 
He was ever devoted to children, and amid the most 
tragic scenes of his eventful life his love for them speaks 
from his letters. Writing to his wife from St. Louis in 
1837, when he was engaged in engineering work for the 
government, he speaks with deep feeling of the sadness 
he felt at being separated from his family, and of his 
anxiety about the training of his little 'son. "Our dear 



FIRST SERVICE 31 

little boy," he says, ''seems to have among his friends 
the reputation of being hard to manage — a distinction 
not at all desirable, as it indicates self-will and ob- 
stinacy. Perhaps these are qualities which he really 
possesses, and he may have a better right to them than 
I am willing to acknowledge; but it is our duty, if pos- 
sible, to counteract them, and assist him to bring them 
under his control. I have endeavored, in my inter- 
course with him, to require nothing but what was, in 
my opinion, necessary or proper, and to explain to him 
temperately its propriety, and at a time when he could 
listen to my arguments, and not at the moment of his 
being vexed and his little faculties warped by passion. 
I have also tried to show him that I was firm in my 
demands and constant in their enforcement, and that 
he must comply with them, and I let him see that I 
look to their execution in order to relieve him as much 
as possible from the temptation to break them." 

Wise words from a father, and the significant thing 
was that they represented his conduct throughout his 
life. He was the personification of reasonableness. 
Small wonder that his youngest son, in his memoir of 
his father, recorded that among his first impressions 
was the recognition of a difference between his father 
and other persons, and a knowledge that he had to be 
obeyed. It was an impression which was later made 
on all who came in contact with him. A glimpse of 
him is given in an incident which he related of a walk 
in the snow with his eldest son when the latter was a 
child. The little boy had fallen behind, and his father, 
looking back over his shoulder, found him trying to 



32 ROBERT E. LEE 

follow his stride and place his feet precisely in his foot- 
prints. "When I saw this," he said, "I felt that it 
behooved me to walk very straight, when this fellow is 
already following in my tracks." ''To be alone in a 
crowd is to be very solitary," he writes to his wife, in 
another letter. "In the woods I feel sympathy with 
the trees and birds, in whose company I take delight; 
but experience no interest in a strange crowd." A 
touch in one of his letters to an old friend and classmate, 
then Lieutenant, afterward Lieutenant-General, Joseph 
E. Johnston, gives a glimpse of his love for children 
and also of that of another old friend: "He complains 
bitterly of his present waste of life, looks thin and dis- 
pirited, and is acquainted with the cry of every child 
in Iowa." 

His son and namesake, in his "Recollections" of his 
father, makes mention of many little instances of his 
love of and care for animals, and the same love of and 
care for animals constantly shine from his letters. 

At one time he picks up a dog lost and swimming 
wildly in "the Narrows," and cared for it through life; 
at another he takes a long, roundabout journey by 
steamer for the sake of his horse ; at another he writes : 
"Cannot you cure poor 'Spec'?" (his dog). "Cheer 
him up ! take him to walk with you — tell the children 
to cheer him up." In fact, his love for animals, like 
his love for children, was a marked characteristic 
throughout his life, and long after the war he took 
the trouble to write a description of his horse "Trav- 
eller," which none but a true lover of horses could 
have written. 



FIRST SERVICE 33 

On his return from Mexico, after an absence so long 
that he failed to recognize his own child whom he had 
left a babe in arms, he was, like Ulysses, first recog- 
nized by his faithful dog/ 

His thoughts were constantly with his children — 
even amid the most arduous duties and the most peril- 
ous scenes his mind reverted to them. His letters 
from Mexico were full of them. On Christmas Eve he, 
in his imagination, filled their stockings, as on another 
occasion, in lieu of his own children, from whom he was 
far distant, he acted Santa Claus and bought presents 
for all the children in the post. And it has been noted 
'^how little of war and how much of Christian feeling 
and domestic affection" his home letters contain. He 
ever kept in touch with his children, writing them of 
the interesting scenes through which he passed. To 
his eldest son, then a school-boy, later a gallant and 
efficient soldier of high rank, he wrote, just after the 
battle of Cerro Gordo,^ how in the battle he had won- 
dered, while the musket balls and grape were whistling 
over his head in a perfect shower, where he could have 
put him, if with him, to be safe. Indeed, all through 
his life children had a charm for him, known only to the 
starved heart of a father exiled from his own fireside 
and little ones. To the day of his death the entrance 
of a child was a signal for the dignified soldier to un- 
bend, and among his most cherished companions in 
his retirement, when he was, perhaps, the most noted 
captain in the world, were the little sun-bonneted 

' "Recollections and Letters of General Lee," by R. E. Lee. 
« Letter of April 25, 1847. 



34 ROBERT E. LEE 

daughters of the professors of the college of which he 
was the president. 

His two elder sons had both entered the military 
profession, which their father held in the highest honor, 
and the letters he wrote them illustrated not only the 
charming relation that existed between father and 
sons, but the lofty ideal on which he ever modelled his 
own life and desired that they should model theirs. To 
his oldest son, then a cadet at West Point, he writes 
from Arlington (April 5, 1852), as he was on the point 
of leaving for New Mexico to see that his '^fine old 
regiment," which had been "ordered to that distant 
region," was "properly cared for": "... Your letters 
breathe a true spirit of frankness; they have given 
myself and your mother great pleasure. You must 
study to be frank with the world. Frankness is the 
child of honesty and courage. . . . Never do a wrong 
thing to make a friend or to keep one. . . . Above all, 
do not appear to others what you are not. ... In re- 
gard to duty, let me in conclusion of this hasty letter 
inform you that nearly a hundred years ago there was 
a day of remarkable darkness and gloom, still known 
as the dark day — a day when the light of the sun was 
slowly extinguished, as if by an eclipse. The legisla- 
ture of Connecticut was in session, and as its members 
saw the unexpected and unaccountable darkness com- 
ing on, they shared the general awe and terror. It was 
supposed by many that the last day — the day of judg- 
ment — had come. Some one in consternation of the 
hour moved an adjournment. Then there arose an 
old Pilgrim legislator, Davenport of Stamford, and said 



FIRST SERVICE 35 

that if the last day had come he desired to be found at 
his place doing his duty, and therefore moved that 
candles be brought in so that the House could proceed 
with its duty. There was quietness in that man's 
mind, the quietness of heavenly wisdom and inflexible 
willingness to obey present duty. Duty, then, is the 
sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all 
things, like the old Puritan. You cannot do more; 
you should never wish to do less. Never let me or 
your mother wear one gray hair for lack of duty on 
your part." ^ 

Such, in brief, was Colonel Robert E. Lee, when at 
the age of fifty-four he found the storm of Civil War 
about to break on the country. 

' It is said that this letter as a whole was made up by a clever news- 
paper man out of parts of different letters by Lee. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 

When the war came Lee had to face the most mo- 
mentous question that ever confronted a soldier. The 
government of the United States and his own State, 
which was later to form a part of a new national gov- 
ernment, were about to be arrayed in arms against 
each other. The former was preparing to invade his 
native State, to coerce by arms the seceded States. 
He had to decide between allegiance to the general 
government, of which hitherto Virginia had formed 
a constituent part, whose commission he had borne, 
whose honors had been conferred on him, and under 
whose flag he had won high distinction, and allegiance 
to his native State, which, on being called on to take 
part against the South or be herself invaded, now in 
the exercise of her constitutional right seceded from 
the Union. 

The John Brown Raid with its aim, the heading of a 
servile insurrection throughout the South, backed as it 
was by blind enthusiasts at the North, affected pro- 
foundly all thinking men at the South. Had it proved 
successful, the horrors of San Domingo would have 
been multiplied a thousandfold, and have swept over 
the South in a deluge of blood. The South was en- 

36 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 37 

raged by this effort to arouse a slave insurrection; but 
the wild sympathy expressed at the North with its 
murderous leader gave it a shock from which it never 
recovered. /Lee had no illusions respecting slavery. 
He saw its evils with an eye as clear as Wendell Phillips's. 
He set forth his views in favor of emancipation in as 
positive terms as Lincoln ever employed. He set free 
before the war all the slaves he owned in his own right/ 
and, by a singular coincidence, within a week after 
the emancipation proclamation he manumitted all the 
negroes received by him from the Custis estate, hav- 
ing previous to that time made his arrangements 
to do so in conformity with the provisions of Mr. 
Custis's will. 

In addition to his attitude toward slavery, as shown 
in his letting his own slaves go long before the war, 
his views on the subject occasionally appear in his 
letters. "I have always observed," he writes, ^Hhat 
wherever you find the negro, you see everything going 
down around him, and wherever you find the white 
man, you see everything around him improving." 
And again: "In this enlightened age there are few, I 
believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an insti- 
tution is a moral and a political evil in any country." 

But he held the views that many if not most of 
the old Virginians held: he esteemed "the relation 
of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and 
influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public 

• The authority for this is a letter from General G. W. C. Lee, in the 
writer's possession, in which he states that General Lee " let his slaves 
go," and one or more of them went to Liberia. The term as represent- 
ing the liberation of slaves is as old as the mission of Moses. 



38 ROBERT E. LEE 

sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white 
and black races while intermingled, as at present, in 
this country." 

He stated after the war that ''the best men of the 
South have long desired to do away with the institu- 
tion, and were quite willing to see it abolished. But 
with them in relation to this subject the question has 
ever been: What will you do with the freed people? 
That is the serious question to-day. Unless some hu- 
mane course, based upon wisdom and Christian prin- 
ciples, is adopted, you do them a great injustice in 
setting them free." 

Most men of open minds have long passed the point 
when we should deny to any honorable man the right 
to make the election which Lee was called on to make 
on the secession of Virginia, as his conscience dictated. 
But with most of us sympathy and affection go to the 
man who chose the weaker side. This choice Lee de- 
liberately made. Wlio knows what agony that accom- 
plished soldier and noble gentleman went through 
during those long weeks, when the sword was sus- 
pended, and he with unblinded vision foresaw that it 
must fall ! He was a devoted Union man. His letters 
all show the depth of his feeling for the Union his fore- 
fathers had contributed so largely to make. To some 
men the decision might have been made more difficult 
by the lure that was suddenly held out to him. But 
not so with Lee. The only question with him was 
what was his duty. 

The President of the United States tendered to him 
the command of the armies of the Union about to take 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 39 

the field. This has long been regarded by those who 
know as an established fact; but it has become the 
custom of late among a certain class to deny the fact 
on the principle, perhaps, that an untruth well stuck- 
to may possibly supplant the truth. Of the fact that 
he was offered the command of the armies of the 
United States there is, however, abundant proof, out- 
side of General Lee's own statement to Senator Reverdy 
Johnson, were more proof needed. The Hon. Mont- 
gomery Blair published the fact as stated by his father, 
the Hon. Francis P. Blair, that he had been sent by 
Mr. Lincoln to Colonel Lee with the offer of the com- 
mand, and long afterward the Hon. Simon Cameron, 
formerly Secretary of War in Mr. Lincoln's cabinet, in 
a published interview, frankly admitted the fact. "It 
is true," he says, "that General Robert E. Lee was ten- 
dered the command of the Union army. It was the 
wish of Mr. Lincoln's administration that as many as 
possible of the Southern officers then in the regular 
army should remain true to the nation which had edu- 
cated them. Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston 
were then the leading Southern soldiers. ... In the 
moves and counter moves in the game of war and peace 
then going on, Francis P. Blair, Sr., was a prominent 
figure. The tender of the command of the United 
States forces was made to General Lee through him. 
Mr. Blair came to me expressing the opinion that Gen- 
eral Lee could be held to our cause by the offer of the 
chief command of our forces. I authorized Mr. Blair 
to make the offer. . . ." ^ 

* New York Herald, cited in Jones's "Lee," p. 130. 



40 ROBERT E. LEE 

But the matter is set at rest by a letter from General 
Lee — his letter of February 25, 1868, to Hon. Reverdy 
Johnson — in which he states that he had a conversation 
with Mr. Francis Preston Blair, at his invitation, and, 
as he understood, at the instance of President Lincoln. 
*' After listening to his remarks," he says, "I declined 
the offer he made me to take command of the ai-my 
that was to be brought into the field, stating as can- 
didly and as courteously as I could that, though op- 
posed to secession and deprecating war, I could take 
no part in an invasion of the Southern States. I went 
directly from the interview with Mr. Blair to the office 
of General Scott, told him of the proposition that had 
been made me and my decision." ^ Indeed, it was this 
offer which possibly hastened his decision. Events 
were moving with startling and unexampled celerity. 
On April 12 Fort Sumter was fired on; on April 13 
President Lincoln called on the unseceded States for 
troops; on April 17 Virginia, hitherto stanch for the 
Union, seceded. This action, in Lee's judgment, con- 
cluded her sons. 

Three days later, on April 20, he resigned his comimis- 
sion in the United States army, declaring that he never 
wished to draw his sword again save in defence of liis 
native State. Even then he "hoped that peace might 
be preserved and some way found to save the country 
from the calamities of war." 

So much we have from his own lips, and that is proof 
enough for those who know his character. 

This action of Lee's at the outbreak of the war, in 

^See also Jones's "Life and Letters of Robert Edward Lee," p. 128. 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 41 

resigning from the army of the United States, and later 
in assuming the command, first of the Virginian forces 
and afterward of the Confederate forces, used, during 
the period of passion covered by the war and the bitter 
years which followed, to be made the basis of a criti- 
cism whose rancor bore an almost precise relation to 
the degree of security which had been sought by the 
assailant during the hour of danger. The men who 
fought the battles of the Union said little upon the 
subject. They knew, for the most part, the lofty feel- 
ing which animated the breasts which opposed them, 
and paid it the tribute of unfeigned respect. The con- 
duct of Grant and of his officers at Appomattox, with 
a single exception, was such as to reflect unending credit 
on them as men of honor and generosity. The charge 
of treason was mainly left to those who, having risked 
nothing on the field of honor, were fain later, when all 
danger was past, to achieve a reputation for patriotism 
by the unappeasable fury of their cries for revenge. 
To these, the vultures of the race, may be added an 
element, sincere and not well informed, who, more than 
half wishing to avail themselves of Lee's transcendent 
character, have found his action in this crisis a stum- 
bling-block in their way. Having been reared solely 
upon the doctrine of Federalism, and taught all their 
lives that the officers of the army of the Union had re- 
ceived their education at West Point at the hands of 
the National Government, and were guilty of some- 
thing like treason, or, as it used to be put, treachery, 
in giving up their commands in the Union army and 
bearing arms for their States against the United States, 



42 ROBERT E. LEE 

they find it difficult to accept the plainest facts. These 
are the bigots of politics. 

As the statement is absolutely unfounded, and as the 
matter goes to the basis of character, it is well to point 
these latter to the facts which disprove wholly and 
forever the premises on which they have based their 
erroneous conclusion. 

It should be remembered at the outset that the 
action of every man must be considered in relation 
to the conditions from which that action springs, and 
amid which it had its being. The most fallacious 
method of considering history is that which excludes 
contemporary conditions and undertakes to judge it 
by the present, the two eras being often far more dif- 
ferent than would be indicated by the mere passage 
of time. 

At the time when Lee and his brother officers re- 
ceived their education at the Military Academy, they 
were sent there as State cadets, and the expense of their 
education was borne at last by the several States, which, 
there being at that time no high tariff and no internal- 
revenue taxation to maintain the National Government, 
miade a yet more direct contribution than since the war 
to the government for its expenses. In recognition of 
this fact, and as compensation for the contribution by 
the States, each representative of a State had the right 
to send a cadet to each academy. Virginia had been 
peculiarly instrumental in creating the Union. She 
had taken a foremost and decisive part in the Revolu- 
tion for those rights on which the Constitution was 
based, and subsequently in the adoption of the Con- 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 43 

stitution. She had led ahke in the field and in the 
council chamber. Without her no Union would have 
been formed, and without her no Union could have 
been preserved during the early decades of its existence. 
To make the Union possible she had ceded her vast 
north-west territory, to which she had the double claim 
that it was first embraced in her charter and later was 
conquered by her sons, led by George Rogers Clark. 
It may be safely predicated that had any one imagined 
that entering into the Union would have given the 
Union government the right to demand service against 
his State, there would never have been a Union. 

There had long been two different schools of gov- 
ernmental thought in the country, the one represent- 
ing the Federalist party and the other representing 
the Republican or Democratic party. They had their 
rise in the very inception of the National Govern- 
ment. Their teachings had divided the country from 
the first. Originally the chief agitation against the 
Federal Government had been at the North, and while 
the parties were not demarked by any sectional lines, 
for the most part, the body of the Federalist party 
were at the period of the outbreak of war, owing to 
certain conditions connected with the institution of 
slavery, and to various advantages accruing to the 
Northern States, as manufacturing States, at the 
North, while the body of the States Rights party were 
at the South. Not only were the powers of the great- 
est statesmen and debaters in the country continually 
exercised upon this question, as, for example, in the 
debates in which Clay, Webster, Hayne, and Calhoun 



44 ROBERT E. LEE 

took part on the floor of the Senate, but the teach- 
ings in the great institutions of learning were divided/ 
It was a question on which not only men divided, but 
populations; and the populations of the North and the 
South had largely exchanged places regarding it. 

But Lee had from his boyhood been reared in the 
Southern school of States' Rights as interpreted by the 
conservative statesmen of Virginia. His gallant and 
distinguished father had been three times governor of 
Virginia, and while heartily advocating in the Virginia 
convention the ratification of the Constitution of the 
United States, favored the Virginia and Kentucky reso- 
lutions of 1798-99, drawn by Mr. Madison and Mr. 
Jefferson, which were based upon the States' Rights 
doctrine. He said in debate : '' Virginia is my country : 
her will I obey, however lamentable the fate to which 
it may subject me." 

He wrote to Mr. Madison in January, 1792, a letter 
in which he said: "No consideration on earth could 
induce me to act a part, however gratifying to me, 
which could be construed into disregard of, or faith- 
lessness to, this commonwealth." 

Such was the teaching under which Robert E. Lee 
had been reared. One knows little of Virginia who does 
not know with what passionate esteem the traditions 
and opinions of a father were cherished by a son. Polit- 
ical views were as much inherited as religious tenets. 

The doctrine that made it treason for a State to 
secede is of modern origin. A question might exist 

' A brief and simple statement of the position of the two sides may 
be found in Ropes's "Story of the Civil War," I, chap. I. 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 45 

as to the propriety or wisdom of secession; but it was 
novel to question its right, and when it had seceded 
few men questioned that it carried with it the alle- 
giance of its citizens. 

As a matter of fact, at the time that young Lee was 
attending the Military Academy at West Point, the 
text-books, such as "Rawle's View of the Constitu- 
tion," which were used there, taught with great dis- 
tinctness the absolute' right of a State to secede, and 
the primary duty of every man to his native State/ 
''It depends on the State itself," declares this authority 
then taught at West Point, 'Ho retain or abolish the 
principle of representation, because it depends on itself 
whether it will continue a member of the Union. To 
deny this right would be inconsistent with the prin- 
ciple on which all our political systems are founded, 
which is, that the people have, in all cases, a right to 
determine how they will be governed. This right must 
be considered as an ingredient in the composition of 
the general government, which, though not expressed, 
was mutually understood, and the doctrine heretofore 
presented to the reader in regard to the indefeasible 
nature of personal allegiance is so far qualified in re- 

* This has been ably and conclusively shown by Mr. Charles Francis 
Adams, of Massachusetts, in his admirable address on "Constitutional 
Ethics," and in his memorial address on the life and character of 
Robert E. Lee, delivered at Washington and Lee University on the 
occasion of the hundredth anniversary of General Lee's birth. His 
distinguished grandfather, John Quincy Adams, who had been Presi- 
dent of the United States, had enunciated the doctrine of secession 
clearly, declaring that it would be better for the States to "part in 
friendship from each other than to be held together by constraint" 
and "to form again a more perfect Union by dissolving that which 
could not bind." (Speech of John Quincy Adams, April 30, 1839.) 



46 ROBERT E. LEE 

spect to allegiance to the United States." "It was ob- 
served that it was competent for a State to make a 
compact with its citizens, that the reciprocal obliga- 
tion of protection and allegiance might cease on certain 
events; and it was further observed that allegiance 
would necessarily cease on the dissolution of the so- 
ciety to which it was due.!' This position was that 
held by the leaders of New England during the first 
half of the century, and was earnestly advanced by 
them both at the time of the acquisition of Louisiana 
and of Texas. 

The action of the Hartford convention in threaten- 
ing secession had blazoned abroad the views of the 
leaders of New England thought at the time when 
the Virginians were straining every force to maintain 
the Union, and John Quincy Adams had presented to 
Congress (January 23, 1842) a petition from a Massa- 
chusetts town (Haverhill), asking the dissolution of 
the Union, on which a motion had been made by a 
Virginia member (Mr. Gilmer) to censure him, which 
had been debated for ten days, Mr. Adams ably de- 
fending himself. 

As has been stated, however, whatever question ex- 
isted as to the right of a State to secede, there was no 
question at the time as to her citizens being bound by 
her action should she secede. The basic principle of 
the Anglo-Saxon civilization was the defence of the 
inner circle against whatever assailed it from the out- 
side, and nowhere was this principle more absolutely 
established than in Virginia. 

In order for those who do not know the facts to un- 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 47 

derstand fully Lee's decision; it should be explained 
that Virginia did not make war on the Union, but the 
Union made war on the South and on Virginia. It has 
■ usually been accepted as an established fact that the 
war began by the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 
1861. Such was not the fact. The bombardment of 
this key to the Charleston harbor was not even the first 
instance of "firing on the flag," as it is usually assumed 
to have been. Three months before this the United 
States transport. Star of the West, was fired on and 
driven back as she was proceeding to revictual Sumter. 
But prior to this the United States Government 
had been actually engaged in acts of war against the 
seceded StaTtes. Troops were being levied and equipped 
and a relief squadron of war had been fitted out and 
despatched for the avowed purpose of relieving and 
rendering impregnable the forts commanding Charles- 
ton harbor. These were acts of war, recognized as 
such by all authorities on this subject save those who 
have held a brief for the Union side in this particular 
struggle. When Virginia refused to join the secession 
movement and attempted to intervene as a peace- 
maker, the only reply she received was a peremptory 
demand to furnish her quota of troops for the war. 
Her answer to this was her ordinance of secession 
and her preparation for defence. But even then 
she took no hostile steps against the North. She 
only prepared to defend her borders. Whatever his- 
torians have written and others have thought, war 
was made on her, and the first shot fired by her within 
her confines or by her orders was in repelling armed 



48 ROBERT E. LEE 

invasion. In such a case her whole people, save those 
in her mountain region, united under her banner with 
its noble legend: Sic semper tyrannis. In a thought- 
ful discussion of the action of Virginia at this time, 
Colonel G. F. R. Henderson, the noted biographer of 
Stonewall Jackson, says: ''There can be no question but 
that secession was revolution, and revolutions, as has 
been well said, are not made for the sake of 'greased 
cartridges.' . . . Secession, in fact, was a protest 
against mob rule. ... It is always difficult to analyze 
the motives of those by whom revolution is provoked ; 
but if a whole people acquiesce, it is a certain proof of 
the existence of universal apprehension and deep- 
rooted discontent. This spirit of self-sacrifice which 
animated the Confederate South has been characteristic 
of every revolution which has been the expression of a 
nation's wrongs, but it has never yet accompanied mere 
factious insurrection. When, in the process of time, 
the history of secession comes to be viewed with the 
same freedom from prejudice as the history of the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it will be clear 
that the fourth great revolution of the English-speak- 
ing race differs in no essential characteristic from those 
that preceded it. . . . In each a great principle was at 
stake: in 1642, the liberty of the subject; in 1688, the 
integrity of the Protestant faith; in 1775, taxation 
only with consent of the taxed; in 1861, the sover- 
eignty of the individual States." ^ 

' Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson," new impression, I, pp. 93, 94. I 
have quoted extensively in this volume from this author, feeling that 
he, as an impartial student of the Civil War and its causes, is an au- 
thority to command respect, 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 49 

Whether, then, those who were in the service of the 
United States at the outbreak of the war were under 
obHgation to remain in her service after their States 
seceded, or were under obhgation to resign and espouse 
the side of their several States, was a matter for each 
man to decide according to his conscience, and scores 
of gallant and high-minded gentlemen thus decided. 
Of the three hundred and odd graduates of West 
Point who were from the South, a considerable majority 
followed their States, and these — men whose character 
would challenge comparison with the loftiest examples 
of the human race. That there was an obligation on 
them to remain and bear arms against their family and 
people because of the source from which their education 
came is sheer nonsense. Had it ever been imagined 
that training at West Point bound a man to serve against 
his family and people in his native State, there would 
have been no West Point Military Academy. This edu- 
cation was but a simple return for the money contrib- 
uted by their States to the general government. And 
Virginia had paid for all she got a hundred times over. 

Without undertaking to enter upon anything like 
a complete discussion of this question of the right 
and the righteousness of secession, it is necessary to 
make clear the belief of the Southern people on the 
outbreak of the war, in order to make clear Lee's 
point of view and the ground of his action; and this 
may hardly be done better than by citing the words 
of one of the leading Northern historians of the war — 
for the fair-minded presentation in his studies of this 
subject gave the late John C. Ropes the right to speak 



60 ROBERT E. LEE 

upon it with authority. ''The attitude then," he says, 
after a brief historical summary of the steps which had 
led up to secession, ''which the seceding States as- 
sumed toward the States which remained in the Union 
was that of foreign nations, as one by one they adopted 
their ordinances of secession and withdrew their sen- 
ators and representatives from Congress. And there 
can be no reasonable doubt that when, in any State, 
the ordinance of secession had been adopted, the people 
of that State — or the great majority of them at least — 
felt that their allegiance was now due solely to their 
State; and even those persons who had strongly and 
earnestly opposed the secession movement, whether 
on grounds of policy or on grounds of right, felt them- 
selves none the less bound loyally to serve their State, 
now that it had seceded. 

"All this it is of the greatest importance to know, 
and continually to bear in mind, if we would under- 
stand the attitude of the Southern people during the 
war. They were not, in their own opinion, rebels at 
all; they were defending their States — that is, the 
nations to which they conceived themselves to belong — 
from invasion and conquest. The character which this 
conviction of the Southern people gave to the contest 
was most noticeable; it is not too much to say that 
none of the usual features of a rebellion were to be 
perceived in the South during the war. There was, 
for instance, nothing in the temper of the South to 
suggest that the war was carried on for the redress 
of grievances — as is always the case among a rebel- 
lious population. On the contrary, the attitude of the 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 51 

South was from the beginning one of resistance to the 
uttermost; it was, in fine, the attitude of a nation re- 
pelHng invasion, dismemberment, conquest. And, we 
repeat, it is of the first importance that we should 
recognize the grounds of this wellnigh universal feel- 
ing among the Southern people if we would under- 
stand the causes of the unanimity and devotion with 
which they, for four long years, withstood the armies 
of the United States." 

Having followed this with a presentation of the 
Northern point of view at that time, Mr. Ropes goes on 
to show that "the Northern people were very certain 
that in 1861, at any rate, the United States constituted 
but one nation," and that the feeling that they were 
"charged with the important task of preserving intact 
the great republic of the world, inspired the people of 
the North with a determination to maintain the integ- 
rity of the nation at any cost. The war," he frankly 
states, "enlisted the patriotic feelings, properly so- 
called, of both the contending parties. The North 
was inspired with f, lofty determination to be true to 
the duty of maintaining in all its integrity the great 
republic of the Western Continent; the South was 
equally resolute to defend the independence of her 
several nationalities. 

"These differences were irreconcilable. The North 
could not admit the contention of the South. She 
denied the right of secession; in her view the seceding 
States werp States in insurrection. The parties were 
thus from the outset hopelessly at variance regarding 
the very terms of the controversy." 



52 ROBERT E. LEE 

While arguing that "the fact that the unadmissible 
claims to independence were set up by communities 
which professed devotion to the institution of slavery 
— a system repugnant to the enlightenment and hu- 
manity of the age — drew to the Union side the moral 
approval of the great mass of the Northern people," he 
disposes briefly of the claim so commonly asserted and 
believed, that the war was waged by the North for the 
purpose of abolishing slavery in the South, and de- 
clares that "that was certainly not the case." The 
war was prosecuted to put down all resistance to the 
National Government. 

This able historian, having given briefly his view of 
the causes which led to this unhappy and disastrous 
war, concludes in these words, in which all fair-minded 
men must unite : "The courage and endurance displayed 
by both sides were wonderful indeed ; and it is clearly 
desirable that the sources and springs of so much valor 
and so much fortitude should be distinctly identified." ^ 

When the great conflict came, the time which tried 
men's souls, no soul in all the limits of this broad coun- 
try was more tried than that lofty soul which had for 
its home the breast of Robert E. Lee. Every senti- 
ment of affection, ambition, and pride bound him to 
the Union. A glimpse of his love for and pride in his 
country may be found in a letter written during his 
stay in Texas, in 1856. Writing of the national holiday 
— the Fourth of July — to his wife he says: "Mine was 
spent, after a march of thirty miles, on .one of the 
branches of the Brazos, under my blanket, elevated on 

» "Story of the Civil War," Ropes, I, pp. 3-9. 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 53 

four sticks driven in the ground, as a sunshade. The 
sun was fiery hot, the atmosphere Hke a blast from a 
hot-air furnace, the water salt, still my feelings for my 
country were as ardent, my faith in her future as true, 
and my hope for her advancement as unabated as they 
would have been under better circumstances." ^ In 
December, 1860, he writes: '' Feeling the aggression of 
the North, resenting their denial of the equal rights of 
our citizens to the common territory of the common- 
wealth, etc., I am not pleased with the course of the 
'Cotton States,' as they term themselves. In addition 
to their selfish, dictatorial bearing, the threats they 
throw out against the 'Border States,' as they call 
them, if they will not join them, argues little for the 
benefit or peace of Virginia, should she determine to 
coalesce with them. Wliile I wish to do what is right, 
I am unwilling to do what is wrong at the bidding of 
the South or of the North." And in January following 
he writes: ''As far as I can judge from the papers, we 
are between a state of anarchy and civil war. May 
God avert from us both! ... I see that four States 
have declared themselves out of the Union. Four 
more apparently will follow their example. Then if 
the border States are dragged into the gulf of revolu- 
tion, one half of the country will be arrayed against 
the other, and I must try and be patient and wait the 
end; for I can do nothing to hasten or retard it." 

Such was the feeling of this Virginian for the Union, 
which was to be put aside at the call of duty. He was 
a Union man, and viewed secession with abhorrence as 

* Letter of August 4, 1856, cited in Jones's "Lee," p. 80. 



54 ROBERT E. LEE 

revolution. Only one thing he viewed with more ab- 
horrence — dishonor. 

Writing from Texas of secession in the beginning of 
1861, he said: "The South, in my opinion, has been 
aggrieved by the act of the North. I feel the aggres- 
sion and am willing to take every proper step for re- 
dress. It is the principle I contend for, not individual 
or private interest. As an American citizen I take 
great pride in my country, her prosperity and institu- 
tions. But I can anticipate no greater calamity for 
this country than a dissolution of the Union. It would 
be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and 
I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its 
preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional 
means will be exhausted before there is a resort to 
force. Secession is nothing but revolution. . . . Still 
a Union that can only be maintained by swords and 
bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take 
the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm 
for me. I shall mourn for my country, and for the 
welfare and progress of mankind. If the Union is 
dissolved and the government disrupted, I shall re- 
turn to my native State and share the miseries of 
my people, and, save in defence, will draw my sword 
no more." ^ 

The agony which he endured when the crucial 
time came may possibly never be known to us. We 
have an account given by Mrs. Lee of the manner 
in which he reached his decision. The Rev. Dr. J. 

' Letter of January 23, 1861, cited in Jones's "Life and Letters of 
R. E. Lee," p. 120. 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 55 

William Jones, who knew them both well and was 
intrusted with many family papers, tells us that 
"the night his letter of resignation was to be written, 
he asked to be left alone for a time, and while he paced 
the chamber above, and was heard frequently to fall 
upon his knees and engage in prayer for divine guidance, 
she waited, and watched, and prayed below. At last 
he came down, came collected, almost cheerfully, and 
said: 'Well, Mary, the question is settled. Here is 
my letter of resignation, and a letter I have written to 
General Scott.' " All night he had wrestled; but in 
the morning light had come.^ This is the letter: 

Arlington, Va., April 20, 1861. 

General : Since my interview with you on the 18th 
inst., I have felt that I ought not longer to retain my 
commission in the army. I therefore tender my resig- 
nation, which I request you will recommend for accept- 
ance. It would have been presented at once but for 
the struggle it has cost me to separate myself from a 
service to which I have devoted the best years of my 
life and all the ability I possessed. During the whole 
of that time — more than a quarter of a century — I 
have experienced nothing but kindness from my 
superiors, and a most cordial friendship from my com- 
rades. To no one, general, have I been as much in- 
debted as to yourself for uniform kindness and con- 
sideration, and it has always been my ardent desire 
to merit your approbation. I shall carry to the 
grave the most grateful recollections of your kind 
consideration, and your name and fame will always 
be dear to me. 

Save in the defence of my native State, I never 

* Jones's "Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee/' p. 132. 



56 ROBERT E. LEE 

desire again to draw my sword. Be pleased to accept 
my most earnest wishes for the continuance of your 
happiness and prosperity, and beheve me most truly 
yours, 

R. E. Lee. 

His wife's family were strongly Union in their senti- 
ments, and the writer has heard that powerful family 
influences were exerted to prevail on him to adhere to 
the Union side. ''My husband has wept tears of blood," 
wrote Mrs. Lee to his old commander, Scott, who did 
him the justice to declare that he knew he acted under 
a compelling sense of duty. 

His letters to his family and to his friends, though 
self-restrained, as was the habit of the man, show 
plainly to those who knew his character how stern was 
the sense of duty under which Lee acted when in his own 
person he had to meet the question whether he should 
take part against his native State. Unlike many other 
officers who knew no home but the post where they 
were quartered, Lee's home was in Virginia, and to 
this beautiful home in his most distant and engrossing 
service his heart had ever yearned. 

Lee had no personal interests to subserve connected 
with the preservation of the institution of slavery; his 
inclinations and his views all tended the other way. 
"In this enlightened age," he had already written, 
"there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that 
slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil." 
He had set free the slaves he owned in his own right, 
and was "in favor of freeing all the slaves in the 
South, giving to each owner a bond to be the first 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 57 

paid by the Confederacy when its independence should 
be secured."^ 

The slaves owned by Mrs. Lee he manumitted in 
1862, or in January, 1863. In fact, it is a curious 
commentary on the motives connected with the war, 
that while Lee had set his slaves free, Grant is said to 
have continued in the ownership of slaves until they were 
emancipated by the government of the United States.^ 

It was, however, not so much the freeing of these 
slaves as the compassion and affection that breathe in 
his letters about them that testify Lee's character. His 
care that every one should have his papers, even though 
he might have gone off to the North; his provision for 
their wages; his solicitude for the weak and feeble 
among them, all testify to the feeling that the Virginian 
master had for his servants. 

In February, 1861, the seven Cotton States that 
had seceded met in convention in Montgomery, Ala., 
and united themselves in an independent government, 
which they termed the Confederate States of America. 
On the 12th of February, negotiations to bring about 
the withdrawal of the garrisons of the forts in Charles- 
ton harbor having failed, and the government being en- 
gaged in revictualling and strengthening Fort Sumter, 
the fort was bombarded and later surrendered. The 



1 "The Confederate Cause and Conduct of the War," p.'22; "Official 
Report of the History Committee, Grand Camp, C. V.," by the late 
Hunter McGuire, M.D., LL.D., Richmond, Va. See also Lee's letter 
of December 27, 1856, " Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee," Jones, p. 82. 

^ Ibid., p. 23, note, where Mrs. Grant is given as authority for the 
statement that "these slaves came to him from my father's family; 
for I lived in the West when I married the general, who was then a 
lieutenant in the army." 



58 ROBERT E. LEE 

following day Mr. Lincoln issued a peremptory call to 
the unseceded States to furnish quotas of 75,000 troops. 

The crisis that came rent Virginia. It was known 
that in the event of war, should Virginia secede, her 
soil would become the battle ground. Lee had no illu- 
sion as to this, nor had he any illusion as to the fury 
and duration of the war if it should come. Wliatever 
delusions others might cherish, he knew the Union 
thoroughly, and knew the temper and the mettle of 
the people of both sections. In the dread shadow of 
war the people of Virginia selected for the great con- 
vention which was to decide the question of remaining 
in the Union or taking part with the other Southern 
States the most conservative men within her borders. 
Thus, the Virginia convention was a Wliig body with 
a large majority of stanch Union men, the first Wliig 
body that ever sat in the State. 

Throughout its entire duration this great body of 
representative Virginians resisted all the influences that 
were brought to bear on them, both from the South and 
from the people of the State, who, under unreasoning 
provocation, gradually changed their opinion and be- 
gan to clamor for secession. Only two weeks before 
the final act by which she severed her connection with 
the Union, she, by a two-thirds majority, rejected the 
idea of secession. A relief squadron sailed for Charles- 
ton while negotiations were going on, and preparations 
for war were being pushed which could only mean one 
thing. As a last and supreme effort to prevent war, 
Union men went to Washington to beg Mr. Lincoln to 
withdraw the garrisons of Sumter and Pickens, and 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 59 

understood him to say that he had been wilHng to take 
it under favorable consideration/ The reply when it 
came was the imperative call for troops to be furnished 
by the States. It meant war and the invasion of the 
State. Even after Sumter was fired on, every effort 
was made by the State to bring about a reconciliation 
between the estranged and divided sections. But it 
was too late. Troops were already marching on her. 
The State of Lee did not make war. War was made 
on her. And under the shock Virginia, on the 17th 
day of April, solemnly reversed her former action and 
seceded from the Union she had done so much to 
create and so much to make great. 

''To have acceded to the demand [for her quota of 
troops to attack South Carolina] would," says Hender- 
son, ''have been to abjure the most cherished prin- 
ciples of her political existence. . . . Neutrality was 
impossible. She was bound to furnish her tale of 
troops and thus belie her principles, or to secede at 
once and reject with a clean conscience the President's 
mandate, . . . The world has long since done justice 
to the motives of Cromwell and of Washington, and 
signs are not wanting that before many years have 
passed it will do justice to the motives of the Southern 
people." 

Speaking of Virginia's action specifically, he de- 
clares: "Her best endeavors were exerted to maintain 
the peace between the hostile sections, and not till her 
liberties were menaced did she repudiate a compact 

' Report of Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1st Sess, 39th Cong., 
pp. 71, 114,115. 



60 ROBERT E. LEE 

which had become intolerable. It was to preserve 
the freedom which her forefathers had bequeathed 
her, and which she desired to hand down unsullied to 
future generations, that she acquiesced in the revolu- 
tion." ' 

Her action concluded her citizens. This was Lee's 
view, as he, after the war, stated under oath before the 
commission appointed to inquire into the reconstruc- 
tion of ,the States, and it was the view of every man 
who sat in her convention. Unionist and Secessionist. 
Ninety-nine out of every hundred of the intelligent 
men in what was known as Old Virginia, the great sec- 
tion east of the Alleghanies which had largely made 
her history, bowed to her decree, and not with the less 
unanimity that a considerable element among them 
were grief-stricken at her decision to separate from the 
Union which their fathers had done so much to create.^ 

Among these was Robert E. Lee. "1 can contem- 
plate no greater calamity for the country than a disso- 
lution of the Union," wrote Lee in January. In April 
the calamity had come. The Union was dissolved in 
so far as his State was concerned, and he had only one 
course left that he could take with honor. Before him 
stood the example of his life-long model, Washington, 
who, having fought with Braddock under the English 
flag, when war came between England and his State, 



* Henderson's "Life of Stonewall Jackson," I, pp. 101, 102. 

* The writer's father was a stanch Union man, and stood out against 
secession till the last; but three days after Virginia seceded he enlisted 
as a private in an infantry companj^, known as the "Patrick Henry 
Rifles," Co. C, 3d Va. Regt., later 15th Va. Regt., and fought through 
to Appomattox. 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 61 

threw in his lot with his people. To him his thoughts 
recurred not only at this moment of supreme decision, 
but years afterward, in the seclusion of the little moun- 
tain town where he spent the evening of his days, as 
the head of the academic institution which Washing- 
ton had endowed. ''In the interviews between Gen- 
eral Scott and Colonel Lee," says Long, ''it is stated 
that the veteran commander earnestly sought to per- 
suade the younger officer not to throw up his commis- 
sion, telling him that it would be the greatest mistake 
of his life. But to all his pleadings Colonel Lee 
returned but one answer — that his sense of duty was 
stronger with him than any prospects of advancement, 
replying to the appeal not to send in his resignation 
in the following words: 'I am compelled to; I cannot 
consult my own feelings in this matter.' " ^ 

Two or three day^ later, on the 20th of April, the 
same day on which he tendered the resignation of his 
command of his regiment of cavalry, he wrote to both 
his brother and sister, informing themi of the grounds 
of his action. To his brother, with whom he had had 
an earnest consultation on the subject two days before, 
he stated that, after the most anxious inquiry as to the 
correct course for him to pursue, he had decided the 
matter in his own mind, and had concluded to resign — 
had, indeed, sent in his resignation — and he had no 
desire ever again to draw his sword save in defence of 
his native State. To his sister, whose husband and 
son espoused the Union cause, he wrote: 

"With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling 

' General A. L. Long's "Memoirs of Robert E. Lee." 



62 ROBERT E. LEE 

of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not 
been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against 
my relatives, my children, my home. I have, there- 
fore, resigned my commission in the army, and save in 
defence of my native State, with the sincere hope that 
my poor services may never be needed, I hope I may 
never be called on to draw my sword. I know you 
will blame me ; but you must think as kindly of me as 
you can, and believe that I have endeavored to do 
what I thought right." 

Could any appeal have come straighter from the 
heart! That they might see how he felt the step he 
took, he enclosed to his brother and sister a copy of 
the letter he had written General Scott. 

All that we know is that, sacrificing place and 
honors and emoluments, leaving his home to the sack 
of the enemy already preparing to seize it, he decided in 
the sight of God, under the all-compelling sense of 
duty; and this is enough for us to know. "What did 
the politicians clamoring for war know of the motives 
that inspired his high soul! His letter to General 
Scott tendering his resignation is full of noble dignity, 
and not without a note of noble pathos where he 
says, in its conclusion, "I shall carry to the grave the 
most grateful recollection of 3'our kind consideration, 
and your name and fame will always be dear to me." 
And to his dying day he always held his old com- 
mander in undiminished affection and honor. 

Yet, however clear Lee was in his view as to his 
own duty, he left others to judge for themselves. 
Holding that the matter was one of conscience, he did 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 63 

not attempt to decide the momentous question for 
others — not even for his own son. Nearly a month 
after he had resigned (May 13, 1861), he wrote to his 
wife: "Tell Custis he must consult his own judgment, 
reason, and conscience as to the course he may take. 
I do not wish him to be guided by my wishes or ex- 
ample. If I have done wrong, let him do better. The 
present is a momentous question which every man 
must settle for himself and upon principle." Custis, 
who had graduated at the head of his class at West 
Point, had been assigned to the Engineers, and on his 
resignation from the army, soon after his father wrote 
this letter, was assigned to duty in preparing the de- 
fences of Richmond. He later rose to the rank of 
major-general, C. S. A. 

After the war, when Lee was perhaps the most 
famous captain of the world, he from time to time 
recurred to this action. For example, in a letter to 
General Beauregard, written the day after his entrance 
on his duties at Washington College, he refers to it: 

"I need not tell you," he says, 'Hhat true patriotism 
sometimes requires men to act exactly contrary at one 
period to that which it does at another, and the mo- 
tive which impels them — the desire to do right — is pre- 
cisely the same. History is full of illustrations of this. 
Washington himself is an example. [He was ever his 
example.] He fought at one time against the French 
under Braddock, in the service of the king of Great 
Britain; at another, he fought with the French at 
Yorktown, under the orders of the Continental Con- 
gress, against him. He has not been branded by the 



64 ROBERT E. LEE 

world with reproach for this; but his course has been 
applauded." 

To the committee of Congress before whom he was 
called after the war, he stated that he resigned because 
he believed that the act of Virginia in withdrawing 
herself from the United States carried him along with 
it as a citizen of Virginia, and that her laws and acts 
were binding upon him/ 

On another occasion he stated his motives in his 
action at this crisis. He says in a letter to an old 
friend:^ ''I must give you my thanks for doing me the 
justice to believe that my conduct during the last five 
years has been governed by my sense of duty. I had 
no other guide, nor had I any other object than the 
defence of those principles of American liberty upon 
which the constitutions of the several States were 
originally founded, and unless they are strictly ob- 
served I fear there will be an end to republican govern- 
ment in tiiis country." 

While the harpies w^ere screaming and clamoring, and 
blind partisanship was declaiming about leaving him 
to the "avenging pen of history," his high soul dwelt 
in the serene air of consciousness of duty performed, 
[e said to General Wade Hampton, in June, 1869: "I 
could have taken no other course save in dishonor, and 
if it were all to be gone over again, I should act in pre- 
cisely the same way." 

Thus spoke his constant soul. It was his deliberate 



' Report of Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1st Sess. 39th 
Cong., p. 133. 

^ In a letter of July 9, 18GG, to Captain James May. 



THE CHOICE OF HERCULES 65 

judgment on calm reflection, with all the consequences 
known to him. As before writing it he cast his mind 
back, how he must have seen everything in the clear 
light of the inexorable past — all the sacrifices he had 
made: the chief command of the Union armies, with 
a great fleet at his back to keep open his lines of com- 
munication, hold the world for his recruiting ground, 
and blockade the South until starvation forced capitu- 
lation. It had lifted Grant from poverty and obscurity 
to the Presidency, while his own choice, to follow his 
State and obey her sacred laws, had reduced him from 
station and affluence to poverty and toil. His beautiful 
home had been confiscated and turned into a cemetery. 
Its priceless treasures, endeared by association with 
Washington, had been seized and scattered. A trial 
for treason impended. He had been indicted with 
Mr. Davis by a mixed grand jury of negroes and 
whites, selected for the purpose, and the furious pack 
were yet trying to hunt him down. Yet there was 
no repining — no questioning. "There was quietness 
in that man's mind." Wlien the sky was darkened 
he had simply lighted the candles and gone on with 
his duty. 

"Duty is the sublimest word in our language," he 
had declared long before, and by it as a pilot-star he 
ever steered his steadfast course, abiding with calm 
satisfaction whatever issue God decreed. 

"We are conscious that we have humbly tried to do 
our duty," he said, about a year after the war; "we 
may, therefore, with calm satisfaction trust in God 
and leave results to Him." 



66 ROBERT E. LEE 

In this devotion to duty and calm reliance on God 
lay the secret of his Hfe. The same spirit animated 
his great Heutenant. ''Duty belongs to us, conse- 
quences belong to God," said Jackson. The same 
spirit animated the men who followed them. It was 
the teaching of the Southern home which produced 
the type of character, the deep foundations of which 
were devotion to duty and reliance on God. 



CHAPTER IV 
RESOURCES 

And now, dealing with the fruits of character, we 
come to the proposition, whether Lee was, as some 
have claimed, a great captain only for defensive op- 
erations, or was a great captain without reservation 
or limitation — one of the great captains of history 
whose genius was equal to every exigency of war to 
which human genius may rise. 

The question involved is of his greatness both as a 
soldier and as a man. And to some extent it reaches 
far beyond the confines of the South and involves the 
basic traits of race and of civilization. It was nobly 
said by Mr. Charles Francis Adams, Sr., to whom almost 
as much as to Lincoln or Grant the final result of the 
war was due, when, as the representative of the United 
States in England, he was challenged on an occasion 
with the argument that the armies of the South had 
defeated the armies of the North, and was asked what 
he had to say about it: ''That they also are my coun- 
tr3anen." Thus, Lee's genius and Lee's fame are the 
possession of the whole country and the whole race, 
which his virtue honored. 

And first, in weighing his abilities as a captain, 
we may ask: What constitutes a great captain? The 

67 



68 ROBERT E. LEE 

question takes us far into the records of both war 
and peace. To most men the answer will come by 
the process of recalling the few — the very few — whom 
history has by universal consent placed in the first 
rank. They are Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Frede- 
rick, and Napoleon, with Cromwell, Turenne, Eugene, 
Gustavus, Marlborough, Washington, Wellington in 
a class so close to them in fame as to leave in 
doubt the rank to which at least one or two of them 
should be assigned. And on their heels crowd a con- 
course of captains great and victorious, yet easily 
distinguishable from the first, if confusingly close on 
the others. 

Napoleon reckoned as his masters for constant study 
the first four, and Gustavus, Turenne, and Eugene. 

Among the modern captains stand two conspicuous 
Americans : first, Washington, whose greatness proved 
equal to every exaction, and who gave promise that he 
would have commanded successfully under all condi- 
tions that might have arisen ; and, secondly, the pereist- 
ent, indomitable Grant, victor of Vicksburg, Missionary 
Ridge, and Appomattox, not so brilliant as Marlbor- 
ough or Frederick, for no flashing stroke of genius 
like Blenheim or Leuthen adorned his record, but 
able, resourceful, constant, indomitable, like Scipio 
or Cromwell. 

What placed those few men of the first rank before 
all others? Not final success. For though success 
final and absolute crowned most of them, final and 
irrevocable defeat was the last reward of others, and 
these the greatest: Hannibal and Napoleon. Such 



RESOURCES 69 

rank, then, was won notwithstanding ultimate defeat, 
and in reckoning its elements, final success bears no 
essential part. 

Studying these captains closely, we discern in all 
certain gifts divided as they were by centuries and 
by the equally vast gulf of racial differences. First, 
imagination — the divine imagination to conceive a 
great cause and the means to support it. It may be 
to conquer the world, or Rome, or Europe. I conceive 
that it was this supreme gift that led Alexander to 
sleep with the casket-set of the Iliad under his pillow 
beside his dagger, and to declare them the best com- 
pendium of the soldier's art. 

Next, there must be the comprehensive grasp that 
seizes and holds firmly great campaigns in their com- 
pleteness, together with the mastery of every detail in 
their execution, both great and small. There must be 
incarnate energy; a tireless mind in a tireless body, 
informed with zeal; the mental, moral, and physical 
courage in complete and overpowering combination 
to compel men to obedience, instant and loyal, un- 
der all conditions whatsoever; to inspire them with 
new forces and endow them with the power to carry 
out orders through every possible chance and change. 
These, taken all together, give the grand strategy. Its 
foundation is the combination in a brave soldier of 
a rare imagination and of a rarer intellect. No 
amount of fighting power or of capacity for calling 
it forth in others proves this endowment. In the Na- 
poleonic wars, '^Ney and Blucher," says Henderson, 
''were probably the best fighting generals of France 



70 ROBERT E. LEE 

and Prussia. But neither could be trusted to conduct 
a campaign." ^ 

Then there must be the supreme constancy to with- 
stand every shock of surprise or defeat without a 
tremor or a doubt, before which mere courage becomes 
paltry, and constant, imminent danger dwindles to a 
bare incident, serving only to quicken the spirit and 
fan its last ember to a consuming flame. 

With these must exist an intuitive and profound 
knowledge of human nature and of men, singly and 
in combination ; power to divine the adversary's every 
design, and to fathom his deepest intention; equal to 
every exigency, amounting to inspiration ; all culminat- 
ing in the power to foresee, to prepare for, divine, and 
seize the critical moment, and, mastering Fate, win 
where others would lose, or, having lost, save where 
others would be destroyed. Then there must be the 
intuitive knowledge of men and the capacity to pick 
and inspire and use them. There must be a profound 
and exact knowledge of the art of war as practised by 
the great masters of all ages. And finally, fusing all 
in one complete and harmonious whole, crowning this 
whole with the one final and absolute essential must be 
the God-given personal endowment of genius, undefined, 
indefinable; unmeasured, immeasurable; sometimes 
flaming at the very first, sometimes slumbering through 
years to burst forth at the moment of supreme crisis; 
sometimes hardly recognized until its light is caught 
down the long perspective of the years, but, when 
caught, recognized as genius. 

* Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson," I, p. 93. 



RESOURCES 71 

Without this a man may be a great captain, a vic- 
torious captain; but not the greatest or among the 
greatest. 

Thus, we come to the measure of Lee's greatness as a 
captain. 

The measure of a captain's abihties must rest, at 
last, on his achievement as gauged by his resources. 

Let us see what Lee accompHshed with his means; 
then we shall be the better able to reckon the measure 
of his success. Let us turn aside for a moment for 
the consideration of a few figures. They are a dry 
and unpalatable diet, but, after all, it was to the 
science of arithmetic that the South yielded at the 
end. 

The South began the war with a white population 
of about 5,500,000. Of these her military population 
numbered about 1,065,000,^ but one-fifth of these were 
inhabitants of the mountain regions, who warmly es- 
poused the side of the Union. 

The North began the war with a white population 
of about 22,000,000. Of these her fighting men whom 
she could call into the field numbered about 3,900,000.^ 
The South enlisted at most about 900,000. The North 
enrolled of her fighting men about 1,700,000,^ besides 
which she enlisted of foreigners about 700,000 and of 
negroes about 186,000. 

^ Besides these she had a servile population of about 3,500,000, of 
which a certain proportion were available for raising subsistence for 
the army. 

^ Besides, of the negroes, the North drew into her armies about 
186,000, they being the most able-bodied of this class. 

^ Cf. "Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America," pp. 40 and 
50, Colonel Thomas L. Livermore. (Houghton, MifHin & Co.) 



72 ROBERT E. LEE 

The North had an organized National Government, 
with all departments — State, War, Navy, Treasury, 
and Justice — perfectly organized and equipped, while 
the South not only had to organize her Confederated 
Government, but fought on a principle of States' Rights, 
which left to each State a power capable of neutralizing 
the general government at the most critical junctures. 
The North had about $11,000,000,000 of taxable values 
as against about $5,000,000,000 in the South, of which 
$2,000,000,000 was represented by the slaves. The 
South had the advantage of the inner line; but she 
was not only assailable by sea, she was divided by nu- 
merous great rivers accessible to the enemy's fleet, and 
she was cut in half by a great mountain region which 
stretched like a vast bar across her entire extent, and 
was occupied by a brave and bitterly hostile population 
that furnished to the Union armies some 180,000 fight- 
ing men. Had this population sided with the South, 
the advantage to her would have been immeasura- 
ble. Maryland and Kentucky would have joined the 
Confederacy; West Virginia and East Tennessee and 
all that they represented would have flung into the 
Southern scale, instead of into the Northern, all their 
weight, and possibly the whole preponderance of 
weight might have been shifted. This mountain re- 
gion, extended through the South, furnished not only 
a great recruiting ground for the Union, but a refuge 
for her armies and a territory as ready for her occu- 
pation as Pennsylvania or Minnesota. Without this 
great Union region, McClellan might have ended his 
days in obscurity without crossing the Kanawha — 



RESOURCES 73 

Missionary Ridge and Chattanooga could hardly have 
become battle-fields, and the March to the Sea would 
probably never have begun. 

The North had by far the best means of transpor- 
tation, a large percentage of the efficient railways, and 
the means of railway equipment. 

In addition to this, the North had nearly all the man- 
ufactures, and possessed a superiority in equipment that 
is incalculable. When the war broke out, the South 
could scarcely manufacture a tin cup or a frying-pan, 
a railway iron, a wool-card, or a carpenter's tool. In 
the possession of arms the North was as superior to the 
South as she was in other manufactured material. This 
was shown at the first battle of Manassas, when McDow- 
ell's guns, beyond the range of Beauregard's smooth- 
bores, hammered to pieces the Confederate left. The 
South improved its stock of guns that day, adding 
before night 25 cannon to their store ; but she was gen- 
erally deficient in equipment to the very end. The re- 
peating carbines of the Federal cavalry later in the war 
multiplied their force many fold. General Gorgas, the 
chief of ordnance of the Confederate States, found within 
the limits of the Confederacy but ''15,000 rifles and 
120,000 inferior muskets, with some old flint-muskets 
at Richmond, and Hall's rifles and carbines at Baton 
Rouge. There was no powder except small quantities 
at Baton Rouge and at Mount Vernon, Ala. There 
was very little artillery and no cavalry arms or equip- 
ments." General Johnston said of Lee, that ''he cre- 
ated the ordnance department out of nothing." The 
day after the victory of First Manassas, there was not 



74 ROBERT E. LEE 

powder enough left in Virginia to fight another battle. 
The North possessed nearly the whole old navy, ships 
and men, the naval forces, and the population from 
which the seamen were drawn. And finally, and above 
all, the North had the ear of the world. 

With this superiority she was enabled to blockade 
the South and lock her within her own confines, while 
the world was open to her, and she could await, with 
what patience she could command, the fatal result 
of ''the policy of attrition." 

No adequate account of the value of the navy to the 
Union side has ever been given, or, at least, has ever 
reached the public ear. The navy turned the scale in the 
war. Had the navy been on the side of the Confederacy 
instead of on the Union side, it is as certain that the 
South would have made good her position as is any 
other fact established by reason. The navy with its 200,- 
000 men enabled the Union not only to seal up the South 
against all aid from without, but to penetrate into the 
heart of the Confederacy, command her interior waters, 
and form at once the base ofsupplies for the Union armies 
when advancing, and their protection when defeated.* 

It is not meant to imply that figures give an exact 
statement of the problem that was worked out during 
the war; but they cast a light upon it which contributes 
greatly to its just comprehension. 

In round numbers the South had on her muster-rolls, 
from first to last, less than 900,000 men. And in this 

* Cf. Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson," I, chap. V, p. 113. "Judi- 
cious, indeed," he says, "was the policy which at the very outset of the 
war brought the tremendous pressure of the sea-power to bear against 
the South." 



RESOURCES 75 

list the South had all she could muster; for, at the 
last; she had enlisted in her reserves all men between 
sixteen and sixty years. In round numbers the North 
had 2,700,000, and besides, had all Europe as her re- 
cruiting field/ 

When the war closed, the South had in the field 
throughout her territory but 175,000 men opposed to 
the armies of the North, uumbering 980,000 men.^ 

' Colonel Thomas L. Livermore, of Boston, author of the notable 
work, "Numbers and Losses," in a letter to the writer says: "I sup- 
pose that it would be safe to assume that eighty per cent (of the en- 
listments) would hold in all the Northern States. This would give 
about 2,234,000 individuals in the army. The Record and Business 
Bureau, in its memorandum of 1896, computed the average estimates 
of re-enlistments by different authorities at 543,393." 

The Confederate forces he estimates at "1,239,000, the number 
shown by the census to have been within the conscript age, less the 
number of exempts (partly estimated and partly recorded), and an 
estimate of the natural deaths; or at about 1,000,000 estimated pro- 
portionally to the killed and 'wounded in the two armies." It will be 
seen that his first estimate above takes no account of the numbers of 
Southerners in the mountain regions who sided with the Union. 

General Marcus J. Wright places the total number of the Southern 
troops at less than 700,000. The total number within the conscript 
age he places at 1,065,000. 

Henderson, in his "Life of Stonewall Jackson," estimates them at 
about 900,000. 

I have felt that possibly this trained and impartial soldier of another 
nation might have arrived at a fairer estimate than any one on this side 
the Atlantic. 

For calculations of Colonel Livermore and General Wright, see 
Appendix A. 

^ Of 346,744 Federal soldiers examined for military service after 
March 6, 1863, sixty-nine per cent were Americans, the rest were for- 
eigners. In the 35th Mass. Regt., which, says Henderson, may be 
taken as a typical Northern regiment, of 495 recruits received during 
1864, 400 were German immigrants. (Henderson's "Life of Stonewall 
Jackson," 1st ed., I, p. 466.) 

The South, or rather those orators who stood as the economists of 
the South, had supposed that her cotton and tobacco were so necessary 
to the rest of the world that the European nations would take her part, 
out of plain consideration for their own welfare. It was a great error. 
The value of the cotton crop exported in 1860 was $202,741,351. In 



76 ROBERT E. LEE 

Toward the close of the war the South was well- 
nigh stripped naked, and for what was left she had no 
means of transportation. She had no nitre for her 
powder, no brass for her percussion caps — the very- 
kettles and stills from the plantations had been used — 
and when it was necessary to repair one railroad as a 
line for transportation, to meet the emergency the best 
rails were taken up from another road less important. 

The commissariat and the quartermaster's depart- 
ment were bad enough, and Lee's army starved to a 
shadow. Study of the matter will, however, convince 
any one that at the very last it was rather owing to the 
desperate condition of the lines of transportation than 
to mere inefficiency of the conamissariat and the quar- 
termaster's department, to which it has been so often 
charged, that Lee failed to carry out his final plan of 
effecting a junction with Johnston.^ 

In fact, from the first a considerable proportion of 
the equipment of the Southern armies and all of their 
best equipment had been captured by them on the 
field of battle. So regular had been their application 
to this source of supply that, says Henderson in his 
"Life of Stonewall Jackson," "the dishonesty of the 
Northern contractors was a constant source of com- 
plaint among the soldiers of the Army of Northern 
Virginia." 

1861 it was $42,000,000. In 1862 it was $4,000,000. After that it 
was next to nothing; yet it was the principal source of revenue of the 
government with wliich to purchase such supplies and munitions of 
war in Europe as were brought in by blockade-runners. 

' I can remember my surprise as a boy at seeing wagons hauling 
straw from my home to Petcrsl)urg, sixty-odd miles, through roads the 
like of which, I trust in Grace, do not now exist in the United States. 



RESOURCES 77 

An English soldier and critic, Colonel Lawler, writ- 
ing in Blackwood's Magazine, has declared his doubt 
whether any general of modern history could have sus- 
tained for four years — a longer time nowadays than 
Hannibal's fifteen years in Italy in times past — a war 
in which, possessed of scanty resources himself, he had 
against him so enormous an aggregate of men, horses, 
ships, and supplies. It is an under, rather than an 
over, estimate to state that during the first two years 
the odds, all told, were ten to one, during the last two 
years, twenty to one, against the Confederates/ 

Truly, then, said General Lee to General Early, in 
the winter of 1865-66: "It will be difficult to get the 
world to understand the odds against which we fought." 
It is known by some in the South — the survivors of 
those armies who tracked the frozen roads of Virginia 
with bleeding feet, whose breakfast was often nothing 
but water from a roadside well, and whose dinner 
nothing but a tightened belt. Some knew it who knew 
the war-swept South in their boyhood, where the threat 
was that a crow flying over it should have to carry 
his rations, and the fact was more terrible than the 
prophecy. 

But it is well for the race to make the world know it. 
It is well that the truth should be revealed. 

In the foregoing computation it is true enough to 
say that we have not reckoned all the resources of the 
South. She had Lee, and she had Jackson ; she had the 
men who followed them, and the women who sustained 
those men. "Lee and Jackson," says Henderson, in his 

' Jones's "Lee," p. 75. 



78 ROBERT E. LEE 

''Life of Stonewall Jackson," ''were worth 200,000 meii 
to any armies they commanded." Quoting Moltke's 
saying, that the junction of two armies on the field 
of battle is the highest achievement of military gen- 
ius, he says in conament: "Tried by this test alone, 
Lee stands out as one of the greatest soldiers of all 
time. Not only against Pope, but against McClellan 
at Gaines's Mill, against Burnside at Fredericksburg, 
and against Hooker at Chancellorsville, he succeeded 
in carrying out the operations of which Moltke speaks." 
But this is not all. No reckoning of the opposing 
forces can be made without taking into account the 
men who followed Lee and Jackson, and the women 
who stayed at home and sustained them. No people 
ever gave more promptly to their country's cause than 
did the old American element of the North, or would 
have been readier, had occasion arisen, to suffer on 
their country's behalf. But it is no disparagement of 
them to state the simple fact that the war did not 
reach them as a people as it reached the people of the 
South. Where a class gave at the North, the whole 
population of the South gave; whereas a fraction suf- 
fered at the North, the entire population of the South 
suffered. The rich grew to be as the poor, and, to- 
gether with the poor, learned to know actual hunger. 
The delicately nurtured came to be hewers of wood 
and drawers of water. War in its most brutal and 
terrible form came to be known all over the land: 
known in disease without medicines; in life without the 
common necessaries of life ; in ravaged districts, bom- 
barded and blackened towns, burnt homesteads, ter- 



RESOURCES 79 

rorized and starving women and children. This the 
South came to know throughout a large extent of her 
territory. Yet, through it all her people bore them- 
selves with a constancy that must ever be a monument 
to them, and that even in the breast of those who were 
children in that stirring period must ever keep alive 
the hallowed memory of her undying resolution. 

"All honor and praise to the fair Southern women!" 
declared a Richmond paper in the closing days of 
1862. ''May the future historian, when he comes to 
write of this war, fail not to award them their due 
share of praise." No history of this war could be 
written without such due award. It is not too much 
to say that as brave and constant as were the intrepid 
soldiery that with steadily wasting ranks followed 
Lee from Seven Pines to Appomattox, even more 
brave and constant were the women who stayed at 
home. Gentle and simple, they gave their husbands, 
their brothers, and their sons to the cause of the South, 
sorrowing chiefly that they themselves were too feeble 
to stand at their side. Hungering in body and heart, 
they bore with more than a soldier's courage, more 
than a soldier's hardship, and to the last, undaunted 
and dauntless, gave them a new courage as with tear- 
dimmed eyes they sustained them in the darkest hours 
of their despondency and defeat. 

Such were among the elements which even in the 
South's darkest hour Lee had at his back. From such 
elements Lee himself had sprung, and in his character 
he was their supreme expression. 



CHAPTER V 

LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 

And now, bearing clearly in mind what his resources 
were, we may approach the question intelligently, 
whether Lee was, as charged by some, great only in 
defence and when on interior lines and behind breast- 
works, or was really the greatest soldier of his time, 
and, perhaps, of the English-speaking race. 

Lee was now fifty-four years old, having reached this 
age without higher rank than that of colonel, the age 
at which most of the great captains have won their 
laurels and laid down their swords. But he was yet in 
the prime of physical and intellectual manhood. His 
temperate habits had borne rich fruit, and possibly in 
neither army had he his superior in bodily or mental 
force or endurance. He was ''as ruddy as young 
David from the sheepfolds," says one who saw him then 
for the first time. Immediately on his resignation 
from the army of the United States, Lee was ten- 
dered by the governor of Virginia the command of the 
forces of the State, which was in the throes of prepara- 
tion to repel the invasion of her territory, and on the 
23d of April he received, at the hands of the president 
of the State convention, the commission of major- 
general of the Virginia forces. It was an impressive 
occasion, for the brief ceremony took place in the 

80 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 81 

presence of the convention which had so long stood 
against secession, but had declared with one voice 
against tolerating invasion. Virginia was there to do 
him honor. The president of the convention, the Hon. 
John Janney, in a brief speech, recalling the example of 
Washington, announced to him the fact that the con- 
vention had by a unanimous vote expressed their con- 
viction that among living Virginians he was '^ first in 
war"; that they prayed he might so conduct the opera- 
tions committed to his charge that it should soon be 
said of him that he was "first in peace," and that 
when that time came, he should have earned the still 
prouder distinction of being "first in the hearts of his 
countrymen." He further recalled to him that Wash- 
ington in his will had given his swords to his favorite 
nephews, with an injunction that they should never be 
drawn from their scabbards except in self-defence or 
in defence of the rights and liberties of their country. 

He said in closing: "Yesterday your mother Vir- 
ginia placed her sword in your hand, upon the implied 
condition that we know you will keep to the letter and 
in spirit, that you will draw it only in defence, and that 
you will fall with it in your hand rather than the ob- 
ject for which it was placed there should fail." 

To this Lee replied in the following simple words: 
"Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: Pro- 
foundly impressed with the solemnity of the occasion, 
for which I must say I was not prepared, I accept the 
position assigned me by your partiality. I would have 
much preferred that your choice had fallen upon an 
abler man. Trusting in Almighty God, an approving 



82 ROBERT E. LEE 

conscience, and the aid of my fellow citizens, I devote 
myself to the service of my native State, in whose be- 
half alone will I ever again draw my sword." 

Thus, passing into the service of his native State in the 
dire hour of her need, Lee was appointed a major- 
general of Virginia's forces, to resist the invasion of 
Virginia's soil, and it was not until the end of August, 
when war was flagrant throughout the land, and 
Virginia had been actually invaded, that he became 
an officer of the Confederate States. Lee set to work 
promptly to place Virginia in a posture of defence. He 
established camps for instruction, and soon had some 
30,000 men under drill, who in a few months increased 
to 60,000. 

On the evening of the day on which Lee received, at 
the hands of the president of the Virginia convention, 
his commission as commander-in-chief of the naval and 
military forces of the commonwealth, an occasion pre- 
sented itself for him to show the nobleness of his char- 
acter, and he met it with the unselfishness which 
was the mark of the man. Among the spectators of 
the ceremony that day was the Hon. Alexander H. 
Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederate States. 
He had come to Richmond for "the purpose of induc- 
ing Virginia to enter the Confederacy," which was "to 
undo, so far as General Lee was concerned, the work 
which had been that morning performed." "The mem- 
bers of the convention," states Mr. Stephens, "had seen 
at once that Lee was left out of the proposed compact 
that was to make Virginia one of the Confederate 
States, and I knew that one word, or even a look of 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 83 

dissatisfaction from him would terminate the nego- 
tiations with which I was intrusted. North Carolina 
would act with Virginia, and either the border States 
would protect our lines or the battle-field be moved 
at once down to South Carolina and the borders 
of Georgia." Accordingly, that evening Mr. Stephens 
sought an interview with General Lee for the purpose 
of making to him a '^ proposal that he resign, without 
any compensation or promise therefor, the very honor 
and rank he had that same morning received." 

Surely Lee must have recalled the difference between 
this proposal and the one which he had received hardly 
a week before, when the command of the Union armies 
had been tendered him; but if he did, he gave no sign 
of it. " General Lee met me quietly, ' ' says Mr. Stephens, 
'^understood the situation at once, and saw that he 
alone stood between the Confederacy and his State. 
. . . General Lee did not hesitate for one moment, and 
while he saw that it would make matters worse to 
throw up his commission, he declared that no personal 
ambition or emolument should be considered or stand 
in the way ! 

''I had admired him in the morning," adds Mr. 
Stephens, ''but I took his hand that night at parting 
with feelings of respect, and almost reverence never 
yet effaced. I met him at times later, and he was 
always the same Christian gentleman. 

"Virginia became one of us, and the battle-field, as 
all men know, and General Lee took subordinate posi- 
tions which for a time placed him nearly out of sight." 

On the 2d of May Lee wrote his wife: "I have just 



84 ROBERT E. LEE 

received Custis's letter of the 30th, inclosing the 
acceptance of my resignation. It is stated it will take 
effect on the 25th of April. I resigned on the 20th, 
and wished it to take effect on that day. I cannot 
consent to its running on further, and he must receive 
no pay, if they tender it, beyond that day, but return 
the whole if need be." 

From Richmond, May 13, 1861, Lee wrote his wife: 
''Do not put faith in rumors of adjustment. I see 
no prospect for it. It cannot be while passions on 
both sides are so infuriated. Make your plans for sev- 
eral years of war. If Virginia is invaded, which appears 
to be designed, the main routes through the country 
will, in all probability, be infested and passage inter- 
rupted. I agree with you in thinking that the in- 
flammatory articles in the papers do us much harm. I 
object particularly to those in the Southern papers, 
as I wish them to take a firm, dignified course, free 
from bravado and boasting. The times are indeed ca- 
lamitous. The brightness of God's countenance seems 
turned from us, and its mercy stopped in its blissful 
current. It may not always be so dark, and he may 
in time pardon our sins and take us under his protec- 
tion. Tell Custis* he must consult his own judgment, 
reason, and conscience as to the course he may take. 
I do not wish him to be guided by my wishes or ex- 
ample. If I have done wrong, let him do better. The 
present is a momentous question which every man 
must settle for himself and upon principle. Our good 

' His SOD then a lieutenant in the Engineer Corps, United States 
army. 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 85 

Bishop Meade has just come in to see me. He opens 
the convention to-morrow, and, I understood him to 
say, would preach his fiftieth anniversary sermon. 
God bless and guard you." 

Immediately on the outbreak of war, Virginia, as an- 
ticipated, became the battle ground. In June the Con- 
federate Government moved its capital to Richmond, 
and naturally the object of the Union Government be- 
came the capture of that city. General Scott, indeed, 
had an idea that the government should avail itself of 
the strong Union sentiment throughout the North-west 
and Central West, and, utilizing the Mississippi, should 
send its army down that vast inland water-way and 
seize New Orleans, thus cutting the Confederate South 
in two at the outset. But the government, with its 
seat at Washington, naturally thought otherwise, and 
the necessary consequence was the invasion of Virginia. 
The plan was to overrun this State and seize Rich- 
mond, where the Confederate Government was now es- 
tablishing its capital, and where the only important 
factory of guns in the South (the Tredegar Iron Works) 
was situated. By this plan Washington could be pro- 
tected at the same time that the advance to over- 
run Virginia was made. Accordingly, on the 21st of 
May the government troops, to the number of some 
11,000 men, crossed the Potomac, seized Alexandria, 
and occupied the heights of Arlington, which they im- 
mediately proceeded to fortify for permanent occupation, 
with a view to pressing forward in obedience to the cry 
which was now heard on all sides: ''On to Richmond!" 

Three or four routes for the advance on Richmond 



86 ROBERT E. LEE 

presented themselves for consideration, following in 
the main the several railroad lines which crossed Vir- 
ginia, and offered lines of communication and means 
of transportation. 

The most direct route was by the Potomac to Acquia 
Creek, some thirty-odd miles below Washington, and 
thence along the Richmond and Fredericksburg Rail- 
way by Fredericksburg and Hanover Junction. This 
was the route which was attempted two years later by 
Burnside with such disastrous consequences at Freder- 
icksburg, and still later with variations by Hooker 
and Grant. Another route was by the Potomac and 
the Chesapeake Bay, either to the mouth of the Rap- 
pahannock, or to Fortress Monroe, at the mouth of 
the James, and thence up the York or the James to 
a point comparatively near to Richmond. This last 
was the route followed by McClellan in the spring of 
1862. The third was along the line of the Orange and 
Alexandria Railroad — the present Southern Railway — 
running south-westerly from Alexandria by Manassas 
Junction, about thirty miles off (where a branch line 
ran westwardly through the Blue Ridge into the Shen- 
andoah Valley), and Culpeper Court House to Gordons- 
ville. Here it met almost at right angles the Virginia 
Central Railroad, running from Richmond by Hanover 
Junction to Gordonsville, and on by Charlottesville to 
Staunton, in the Valley of Virginia — the upper Shenan- 
doah Valley. At Charlottesville another railway line 
ran southwardly to Lynchburg, on the upper James, 
and on through South-western Virginia to Tennessee. 
The fourth route, the longest and least feasible, lay 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 87 

along the railway from Harper's Ferry, the point at 
which the Potomac breaks through the BUie Ridge, to 
Winchester, and thence through the fertile Valby of 
Virginia to Staunton, on the Virginia Central Railway. 

Thus, it will be seen that the only all-rail route to 
Richmond at the time lay along the Orange and Alex- 
andria Railway, and that the two principal points 
thereon were Manassas Junction (where the branch 
road ran through Manassas Gap into the Shenandoah 
Valley) and Gordonsville, where the road joined the 
Virginia Central Railway, the direct route from Rich- 
mond to both the upper Shenandoah Valley and the 
South-west. This route had the additional advan- 
tages that it ran through a fertile and open country, 
with comparatively good roads, and with streams less 
difficult to cross than lower down, where the Rappa- 
hannock and the North Anna presented serious ob- 
stacles if properly defended. 

Up to this time Colonel Thomas J. Jackson had 
commanded the raw contingent of Southern troops 
who held Harper's Ferry at the point where the Shen- 
andoah joins the Potomac and, thus reinforced, the 
latter breaks through the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

Here had been the arsenal which John Brown had 
crossed into Virginia to seize in October, 1859, in his 
mad attempt to arouse the slaves to insurrection. It 
was still considered a strategic point, and on the 23d 
of May, General Joseph E. Johnston was sent to take 
command of it, and of the Army of the Shenandoah, as 
it was called. He had been a classmate of Lee at West 
Point, and had served with such distinction in the war 



88 ROBERT E. LEE 

with Mexico that General Scott is said to have char- 
acterized him as "a great soldier." Fitz Lee, in his 
admirable ''Life of General Lee," says of him that he 
became "distinguished before his beard grew," and 
that ''his decision to fight under the flag of the South 
was hailed with delight by the Southern people." 

Against him now was opposed Major-General Robert 
Patterson, of Pennsylvania, also a veteran, who had 
been placed by General Scott in command of the De- 
partment of Washington. Assisted by such able 
officers as Fitz John Porter, A. E. Burnside, George A. 
Thomas, and many others who later won high and 
deserved distinction, he had been busy organizing and 
equipping an army intended to seize Harper's Ferry, 
sweep up the valley of the Shenandoah, and, crossing 
the Blue Ridge, drive Beauregard from Manassas and 
seize this strategic point. He secured Harper's Ferry 
without a struggle, having, by an advance with the 
evident design of crossing the Potomac at Williamsport 
and flanking Johnston by marching to Martinsburg, 
forced him to abandon Harper's Ferry as untenable. 
Johnston posted himself at a point called Bunker 
Hill, with a view to fighting Patterson on selected 
ground if the chance offered before McClellan, who was 
reported to be advancing from Western Virginia, could 
join him. Patterson was in the act of crossing the 
Potomac when he received an order from General 
Scott to forward to Washington at once all the regular 
troops under his command, together with Colonel A. 
E. Burnside's picked Rhode Island regiment. Gen- 
eral Scott for good reason, as appeared to him, had 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 89 

changed the plan by which he had proposed to fight 
the first pitched battle in the valley of the Shenandoah, 
and now planned to fight first at Manassas, while 
Patterson should hold Johnston in the valley. 

The commander assigned to defend this important 
point by the Southern government was General Beau- 
regard, a Louisianian of French extraction, as the name 
implies, and a gallant and able soldier. He had com- 
manded at Charleston at the outbreak of hostilities, 
where he had shown ability both as an officer and as an 
engineer, and he was now the idol of the Southern 
people, and was soon to increase this measure of ap- 
probation by his victory on the plain of Manassas. 

A story used to be told, after the war, of some one 
having spoken to a Creole gentleman of New Orleans 
of Lee in terms of warm praise, and having received 
the reply: "Yes, yes — I t'ink I have hear' Beauregard 
speak well of him." 

It was apparent to Lee and the other trained sol- 
diers that the first serious attempt of the Union gen- 
erals would be to seize the strategic point presented by 
the junction at Manassas of the Orange and Alexandria 
Railway and of the railway running from Manassas to 
the Shenandoah Valley, where Johnston was opposing 
Patterson. Every effort was therefore made to pre- 
pare for the battle to be fought here. And to this Lee 
bent all his energies, organizing, equipping, and for- 
warding troops as fast as possible. Other points also 
had to be guarded. Norfolk, where Huger commanded, 
and the Peninsula between the York and the James 
River, where Magruder commanded, both had to be 



90 ROBERT E. LEE 

protected; but the chief anxiety at this time centred 
on Manassas. Lee was the third in rank of the major- 
generals appointed by Mr. Davis, and his first service 
was to put Virginia in a posture of defence. That he 
promptly effected this was shown on the plain of Ma- 
nassas, on July 2L 

The troops organized for this movement were pos- 
sibly about equal in number on both sides — some 
30,000 men. With the invasion of Virginia the govern- 
ment at Washington had created what was known as 
the Department of Virginia, and to the command of 
this department was assigned General Irwin McDowell, 
a native of Ohio, of Virginian descent, and a gallant 
officer and gentleman. He laid out his plan of cam- 
paign to the satisfaction of his superiors in Washing- 
ton, which was — to march on Manassas and, by turning 
Beauregard's left flank, manoeuvre him out of his 
position. He was to have not less than 30,000 men, 
and the Southern troops in the Shenandoah Valley 
were to be held there by Patterson's force. This hav- 
ing been provided for, as was believed, McDowell, on 
the 16th of July, with entire confidence put his army 
in motion for Manassas, where his old classmate and 
friend, Beauregard, awaited him with equal confidence 
in the issue. And here, on the uplands above the 
little stream known as Bull Run, the first great battle 
on Virginia soil was fought out, on the 21st of July, 
five days later. 

Everything went with McDowell like clockwork, 
only it was slow clockwork. Setting out from his 
camp at Alexandria on the 16th, he reached Centreville 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 91 

the following day, and instead of pressing forward, he 
spent two days in reconnoissances, and did not attack 
Beauregard until the morning of the 21st. For a time 
after the battle began the advantage was greatly in his 
favor, and by three o'clock he was pressing the defen- 
sive force hard. 

One thing, however, had not been provided for prop- 
erly. When McDowell laid his plan of campaign be- 
fore his superiors in Washington, General Scott had 
promised him that if Johnston, lying about Winchester, 
in the Shenandoah Valley beyond the Blue Ridge 
Mountains, some fifty miles away, attempted to rein- 
force Beauregard, he should find Patterson hanging on 
his heels. But he did not reckon with the full ability 
of Johnston or his lieutenants, Jackson and Stuart. It 
had already been decided in Richmond, where Lee was 
at work, with the chessboard before him, what moves 
and countermoves would be made, and no sooner was 
McDowell on the march than steps were taken to meet 
the shock of the approaching encounter with the full 
force of the Confederate armies within call. General 
Holmes, with his brigade backed by a battery of artil- 
lery and cavalry, was ordered up from Acquia Creek, 
thirty miles to the south-east, and General Johnston 
was also ordered to slip away from Patterson, and, 
crossing the Blue Ridge, join Beauregard. Holmes 
arrived duly, and Johnston arrived on the 20th from 
the Shenandoah Valley, with the brigades of Bee, 
Bartow, and Jackson, his other brigades, under Kirby 
Smith and Elzey, arriving next day. Stuart also ap- 
peared on time after a forced march across the 



92 ROBERT E. LEE 

mountains. The numbers on both sides were about 
equal, but the arrival of this fresh force of Johns- 
ton's in the nick of time turned the scale. The ad- 
vance of the Federals against the Confederate left 
was first checked, then turned into a repulse, and 
then into a decisive defeat, which soon became a 
disastrous rout. 

Unfortunately for the Southern cause the victory 
of Manassas was not followed up. The magnitude of 
the disaster was fully recognized by the North, and 
President Lincoln issued a call the next day for 
500,000 troops, and summoned from Western Vir- 
ginia, where he had displayed qualities of a high 
order, the most promising young general in the 
service, George B. McClellan. But at the South it 
appeared as if it were generally thought that this vic- 
tory had decided the issue of the war. The simple 
fact, however, was that the victorious army was with- 
out the necessary equipment to take the field. 

Although Lee was not present in this great first 
battle on Virginia soil, his hand was clearly shown in 
the provision made for the crisis, and although he gave 
no outward sign by which it could be known, he must 
have inwardly chafed at the fate which at this critical 
period consigned him to the bureau service of an ad- 
jutant's office. 

On June 9, 1861, he wrote to his wife: "You may be 
aware that the Confederate Government is established 
here. Yesterday I turned over to it the command of 
the military and naval forces of the State, in accord- 
ance with the proclamation of the governor, under an 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 93 

agreement between the State and the Confederate 
States. I do not know what my position will be. I 
should like to retire to private life, so that I could be 
with you and the children; but if I can be of service 
to the State or her cause, I must continue. Mr. Davis 
and all his Cabinet are here." And two days after- 
ward he displays his fortitude and his piety when he 
tells her: "I am sorry to learn that you are anxious 
and uneasy about passing events. We cannot change 
or hinder them, and it is not the part of wisdom to be 
annoyed by them. In this time of great suffering to 
the State and country, our private distresses we must 
bear with resignation, and not aggravate them by re- 
pining, trusting to a kind and merciful God to overrule 
them for our good." 

Lee was now an officer without a conmiand, or, pos- 
sibly, even without rank.^ ' Nominally," says Mr. Alex- 
ander H. Stephens, ''General Lee lost nothing; but 
practically, for the time being, he lost everything. The 
government moved to Richmond, and Mr. Davis di- 
rected General Lee to retain his command of the Vir- 
ginia troops, which was really to make him recruiting 
and drill inspector. ..." 

On June 14 Lee wrote to his wife from Richmond, 
where he was engaged in the important but somewhat 
humdrum labor of providing an army for another to 
command: ''My movements are very uncertain, and I 
wish to take the field as soon as certain arrangements 
can be made. I may go at any moment to any point 
where it may be necessary." 

On the 12th of July he wrote her again: "I am very 



94 ROBERT E. LEE 

anxious to get into the field, but am detained by matters 
beyond my control. I have never heard of the assign- 
ment to which you allude — of commander-in-chief of 
the Southern army — nor have I any expectation or 
wish for it. President Davis holds that position. I 
have been laboring to prepare and get into the field the 
Virginia troops to strengthen those from other States 
and the threatened commands of Johnston, Beauregard, 
Huger, Garnett, etc. Where I shall go I do not know, 
as that will depend on President Davis." 

Was ever soldier more unselfish! 

Lee was not one of those who had any delusions as 
to the magnitude of the struggle, or as to Manassas 
having decided the fortunes of the war. On July 27, 
six days after the battle, he wrote Mrs. Lee again from 
Richmond: "That, indeed, was a glorious victory, and 
has lightened the pressure upon us amazingly. Do not 
grieve for the brave dead; but sorrow for those they 
have left behind — friends, relatives, and families. The 
former are at rest ; the latter must suffer. The battle 
will be repeated there in greater force. I hope God 
will again smile on us, and strengthen our hearts and 
arms. I wished to partake in the former struggle, and 
am mortified at my absence. But the President thought 
it more important that I should be here. I could not 
have done as well as has been done, but I could have 
helped and taken part in a struggle for my home and 
neighborhood. So the work is done, I care not by 
whom it is done. I leave to-morrow for the army in 
Western Virginia." 

Indeed, it is stated that so far was General Lee 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 95 

from being influenced by any considerations of a self- 
ish nature, that when Virginia joined the Southern 
Confederacy and left him without rank, he seriously 
contemplated enlisting in the company of cavalry 
commanded by his son/ General Long, his military 
secretary, gives this account of his first interview with 
General Lee. Having resigned his commission in the 
United States army, Long reported to Richmond, in 
company with three other officers. Colonels Loring and 
Stevenson, and Lieutenant Deshler, who had likewise 
resigned, and waited upon General Lee to offer their 
services to him. He was struck, he states, with 
the ease and grace of his bearing, and his courteous and 
mild but decided manner; and the high opinion he 
then formed of him was fully sustained in the inti- 
mate relations which afterward existed between them. 
Though at that time he had attained the age of fifty- 
four years, his erect and muscular frame, firm step, and 
the animated expression of his eye made him appear 
much younger. He exhibited no external signs of his 
rank, his dress being a plain suit of gray. His office was 
simply furnished with plain desks and chairs. There 
were no handsomely dressed aides-de-camp or staff 
officers filling the anteroom. There was not even a 
sentinel to mark the military head-quarters. His only 
attendants were Captain Walter Taylor — afterward 
Colonel Taylor — adjutant-general of the Army of 
Northern Virginia, and two or three clerks. 

Indeed, Lee was ever the simplest of men in his 
personal surroundings. Again and again we have a 

' Jones's "Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee." 



96 ROBERT E. LEE 

glimpse of him in the correspondence and memoirs of 
the time. His camp equipage was of the simplest 
character — his table service was of "neat tin," the 
pieces of which slipped into each other. A single head- 
quarters wagon sufficed for the commander of the 
Army of Northern Virginia, and many a brigadier rode 
with a more imposing staff than accompanied him. 

The game, as it appears now to all, and as it appeared 
then to those who had to shoulder the responsibility 
of playing it, was, on the one side, the sealing up of the 
South within its own borders, the suppression of the 
power of the border States, such as Maryland, Ken- 
tucky and Missouri, to join the South, and the cutting 
in two of the section already seceded ; on the other, it 
was the simple maintenance of the status quo of the 
seceded section, the power to exercise the right of 
secession in the border States, and the resistance of 
invasion. There was no claim on the part of the South 
to the right of invasion, and no thought of invasion of 
the North until the exactions of war made it necessary 
as a counterstroke. Even after the victory of Ma- 
nassas, while the eager element clamored because the 
victory was not followed up, the Confederate Govern- 
ment held back the eager Jackson and sustained the 
prudent Johnston. Such being the game, it was played 
on both sides with clear vision and impressive deter- 
mination. And no one saw more clearly than Lee 
the magnitude of the impending struggle. 

Of Lee's far-sightedness we have signal proof in his 
letters. While others discussed the war as a matter 
of days and occasion for a summer holiday, he, with 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 99 

and Ohio Railroad, had, partly by reason of the origin 
and character of the population, partly by reason of 
their direct association with the North and West; but 
mainly owing to the absence of slaves among them, 
been unaffected by the causes which created the fric- 
tion between the North and South. Here in this 
mountainous and substantially non-slave-holding region 
bordering on the States of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and 
mainly trading by way of the Ohio River and the Bal- 
timore and Ohio Railroad with the North and West, the 
population was almost as strongly Union in sentiment 
as that of the States with which they marched, and, 
finally, when the conflict came, the major portion of 
the population sided with the North and stood for the 
Union. 

The importance of securing this great western section 
of the leading Southern State was manifest to both sides, 
and from the first, troops were thrown into the State by 
both sides to control and hold it. General Robert S. 
Garnett had been early despatched with a command to 
protect the western border and awe into submission 
the wavering and the disaffected. He was a Virginian 
and had served with distinction in the Mexican War, 
and on his resignation from the army on the outbreak 
of the war had been assigned to duty as adjutant- 
general of the Virginian troops, and later had been 
commissioned a general of the Confederate army. 
Opposed to Garnett in Western Virginia was a general 
who was soon to become the hope and mainstay of the 
government at Washington, and the idol of the Union 
army, George B. McClellan. He was Garnett's junior 



100 ROBERT E. LEE 

by several years, and had graduated at West Point in 
1846 in the same class with Stonewall Jackson and A. 
E. Burnside. He had been assigned to the Engineers, 
and after achieving distinction in Mexico had resigned 
from the army to enter civil life. He was engaged in 
Ohio as an engineer at the outbreak of the war, and 
having promptly offered his services to the Governor 
of Ohio, and been appointed major-general of Ohio 
volunteers, had shown marked capacity in organizing 
and forwarding troops. He had now been placed in 
command of the Department of the Ohio, and recogniz- 
ing the importance of seizing and holding the mountain 
region of Virginia, he had on the 26th of May, without 
waiting for orders, crossed the Ohio River and thrown 
troops over into that section.^ The fruits of this early 
occupation were so apparent, and his services were so 
efficient, that he soon secured the confidence of the gov- 
ernment at Washington, and later was advanced to the 
highest command. Pushing forward now into the heart 
of this Union section of Virginia, and outflanking Gar- 
nett, who occupied, with a force of some 5,000 men, a 
position at Laurel Hill, on the turnpike leading to the 
county seat of Randolph County, he forced Garnett 
from his position, cut off and captured on July 12 a 
portion of his force, posted on Rich Mountain, consisting 
of about 560 men, under Lieutenant-Colonel Pegram, 
and following up his advantage with rapidity, over- 
took Garnett at Carrick's Ford, on the main branch of 
Cheat River. In the fight which ensued Garnett was 
killed and his command routed. The course of events, 

' McClellan's Own Story. 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 101 

had made the eastern rather than the western border 
of this section the seat of operations, with Harper's 
Ferry, or more properly Winchester, as the key to the 
situation, and when Harper's Ferry, on the advance of 
Patterson, soon after the first outbreak of war, fell into 
the hands of the Federal troops, McClellan had seized 
the passes that commanded the western region and 
fortified them strongly. McClellan's rapidity of move- 
ment in this campaign, aided possibly by his Napo- 
leonic style of congratulation to his army, beginning, 
'^Soldiers, I am more than satisfied with you," gained 
him the sobriquet of "The Little Napoleon." Two cir- 
cumstances were noted at the time, and later became 
conspicuous in the light of subsequent events: he 
overestimated the force opposed to him at more than 
double its actual strength, and General Scott, in 
expressing how "charmed the general-in-chief, the 
Cabinet, and the President were with his activity and 
valor," declared that they did not mean "to precipi- 
tate him, as he was fast enough." The irony of fate at 
times is curious. This despatch of Scott's bore the 
same date with Lee's letter expressing regret that he 
could not be in the field. We shall see what a year 
was to bring forth. 

McClellan, outmatching the commands and the 
commanders opposed to him, had thus soon showed 
substantial success for the Union side. Scott had 
hitherto commanded the armies of the Union, but as a 
younger man was needed for such onerous service, on 
the 1st of November, 1861, General George B. McClel- 
lan was appointed to the chief command. 



102 ROBERT E. LEE 

Possibly, the fact that Scott was a Virginian had 
something to do with the decision, as it almost cer- 
tainly had to do with the passing by of Thomas in the 
earlier stages of the war; the latter's name not even 
having been mentioned in the President's congratula- 
tory order on the victory of Mills Springs, which Thomas 
had won in Kentucky. It is said that Mr. Lincoln, in 
reply to criticism of the omission, said: '^He is a Vir- 
ginian; let him wait." ^ 

The day after the battle of Manassas, McClellan was 
telegraphed from Washington that his presence there 
was necessary, and on his arrival, he was promptly as- 
signed to the command of the Department of Washing- 
ton and North-eastern Virginia, while Rosecrans suc- 
ceeded to the command in Western Virginia. Rose- 
crans, having thus succeeded to the command of the 
troops despatched to hold Western Virginia, was now 
leading an invading force up the Kanawha, while Reyn- 
olds was posted on the Cheat River to guard the chief 
avenue of communication between the East and the 
West. 

The Confederate forces in this mountainous region 
were divided into several detachments. Two of them 
were on the Kanawha under conamand, respectively, of 
Generals Floyd and Wise, who had raised brigades and 
were both very popular with the Virginians, John B. 
Floyd having been Secretary of War in President 
Buchanan's Cabinet, and Henry A. Wise having been 
governor of Virginia. And two others were farther 

' "Life of George B. Thomas," by Thomas B. Van Horn, p. 56. 
Ropes's "Story of the War," I, p. 209, n. 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 103 

eastward under Generals Loring and H. R. Jackson. 
Among these commanders the spirit of co-operation 
left much to be desired. Owing partly to the hostility 
of the population and partly to the lack of harmony 
among the commanding officers, the cause of the 
South steadily waned in this trans-Alleghany region, 
and in July it had become manifest that a soldier of 
rank and experience must be sent to Western Vir- 
ginia, unless it was to be lost permanently to the 
South. After Johnston had been offered the com- 
mand in this territory and had declined the billet. 
General Lee, who was ready to go anywhere, was sent 
out to Western Virginia to take command of the 
somewhat disorganized forces in that hostile region. 

Lee left Richmond for Western Virginia on the same 
day (July 28) that McClellan, called from that region, 
took command at Washington of the army designed 
to capture Richmond. It was Lee's first opportunity 
to serve in the field. His own letters from Western 
Virginia throw a light not only on the situation there, 
but on his character. 

On his arrival he wrote to his wife, giving an idea 
of his surroundings and a hint of the difficulties by 
which he found himself confronted. He says : " I reached 
here yesterday to visit this portion of the army. The 
points from which we can be attacked are numerous, 
and the enemy's means unlimited, so we must always 
be on the alert. It is so difficult to get our people, un- 
accustomed to the necessities of war, to comprehend 
and promptly execute the measures required for the 
"occasion. General Johnson, of Georgia, commands on 



104 ROBERT E. LEE 

the Monterey line, General Loring on this line, and 
General Wise, supported by General Floyd, on the 
Kanawha line. The soldiers everywhere are sick. 
The measles are prevalent throughout the whole army. 
You know that disease leaves unpleasant results and 
attacks the lungs, etc., especially in camp, where the 
accommodations for the sick are poor. I travelled 
from Staunton on horseback. A part of the road I 
travelled over in the summer of 1840 on my return to 
St. Louis, after bringing you home. If any one had 
told me that the next time I travelled that road would 
have been my present errand, I should have supposed 
him insane. I enjoyed the mountains as I rode along. 
The views were magnificent. The valleys so peace- 
ful, the scenery so beautiful. Wliat a glorious world 
Almighty God has given us! How thankless and un- 
grateful we are!"^ 

And from Valley Mountain, August 9, 1861, he writes: 
"I have been three days coming from Monterey to 
Huntersville. The mountains are beautiful, fertile to 
the tops, covered with the richest sward and blue grass 
and white clover. The enclosed fields wave with a 
natural growth of timothy. This is a magnificent 
grazing country, and all it wants is labor to clear the 
mountain sides of timber. It has rained, I believe, 
some portion of every day since I left Staunton. Now 
it is pouring. Colonel Washington, Captain Taylor, 
and myself are in one tent, which as yet protects us. I 
have enjoyed the company of our son while I have 
been here. He is very well and very active, and as yet 

1 Letter, dated August 4, 1861. 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 105 

the war has not reduced him much. He dined with 
me yesterday and preserves his fine appetite. To-day 
he is out reconnoitring, and has the full benefit of this 
fine rain. I fear he is without his overcoat, as I do not 
recollect seeing it on his saddle. I told you he had 
been promoted to a major in the cavalry, and he is the 
commanding cavalry officer on this line at present. 
He is sanguine, cheerful, and hearty as ever. I sent 
him some cornmeal this morning, and he sent me some 
butter — a mutual exchange of good things. The men 
are suffering from measles and so on, as elsewhere, but 
are cheerful and light-hearted. The nights are cool 
and the water delicious. Send word to Miss Lou 
Washington that her father is sitting on his blanket 
sewing a strap on his haversack. I think she ought to 
be here to do it." 

His reputation, gained among the mountains of 
Mexico, was doubtless one of the motives which ruled 
when he was assigned to duty among the mountains 
of Western Virginia; but even his abilities were not 
equal to conquering the conditions which he found pre- 
vailing there. Three small forces were occupying this 
region on behalf of the South, each dignified by the 
title of an army. But the generals would not take 
orders from each other, and two of them were bitterly 
hostile. When Lee arrived he found one army posted 
on the crest of a mountain and the other at its base, 
and though the enemy was close at hand, neither gen- 
eral would yield to the other. Lee considered the 
position selected by General Wise on the crest as the 
better of the two, and united the two forces there. 



106 ROBERT E. LEE 

But the quarrel between the two generals could not be 
made up, and as General Floyd ranked Wise, the latter 
had to be relieved and transferred elsewhere. Old 
soldiers who have discussed the causes of the result of 
this campaign have never given wholly satisfactory 
reasons for it, but have felt assured that all that could 
have been accomplished Lee accomplished. They have 
felt that in the first place the dissensions of the officers 
previously in command had tended to demoralize the 
troops; then, that the sickness among the troops, 
unaccustomed to the exposure or prostrated by an epi- 
demic of typhoid fever, measles, and other diseases, im- 
paired their efficiency, and finally, that the unlooked- 
for hostility of the population at large in a region where 
it was difficult at best to maintain lines of communica- 
tion, now, in a season unprecedentedly wet, which ren- 
dered the roads impassable, combined with lack of 
means of transportation to frustrate the plans of even 
so capable a commander as Lee. Lee himself referred 
to it later as "a forlorn hope." On September 1, Lee 
writes Mrs. Lee, giving a hint of his difficulties: ''We 
have had a great deal of sickness among the soldiers, 
and those now on the sick list would form an army. 
The measles is still among them, but I hope is dying 
out. The constant cold rains, mud, etc., with no shel- 
ter or tents, have aggravated it. All these drawbacks, 
with impassable roads, have paralyzed our efforts." 

Lee's report makes mention of the difficulty of main- 
taining his lines of conamunication, owing to the ex- 
hausted condition of his horses and the impossibility 
of obtaining supplies; so it may be assumed that this 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 107 

was in his view the chief reason for the failure of the 
campaign. 

The first object of Lee's offensive operations was the 
destruction of Reynolds, posted in a strong position on 
the summit of Cheat Mountain, commanding the pass 
and the important roads which led from the west to 
the Valley of Virginia. The latter's force was estimated 
in all at about 10,000 men, while Lee had about 6,000. 
It was necessary to dislodge him, and as his position 
at the pass was too well fortified to be assaulted in 
front, Lee determined, after a personal reconnoissance, 
to dislodge him by crossing the mountain and attacking 
him in the rear. Dispositions were accordingly made 
for this purpose. A body of troops were crossed over 
the mountain by a trail which had been discovered. 
The movement, however, proved a failure, because the 
attack on the fortified position on Cheat Mountain, 
which was to be the signal for the assault intended to 
be made by the body of troops sent by night across 
the mountains to attack Reynolds's position in the rear, 
was not made as ordered by Lee. And the flanking 
force, having had their ammunition damaged and their 
provisions destroyed by a furious storm, which raged 
all night, missing the concerted signal, returned across 
the mountains without making the expected assault. 
If any one else was to blame for this failure to carry 
out Lee's well-conceived plan, the commander, bitterly 
disappointed as he was, with the magnanimity char- 
acteristic of him, simply passed it by, as he later did 
similar failures on the part of his subordinates, assum- 
ing himself whatever blame attached to the failure. In 



108 ROBERT E. LEE 

a letter to Mrs. Lee, dated Valley Mountain, September 
17, 1861, the general expressed his disappointment: 
"I had hoped to have surprised the enemy's works on 
the morning of the 12th, both at Cheat Mountain and 
on Valley River. All the attacking parties with great 
labor had reached their destination, over mountains 
considered impassable to bodies of troops, notwith- 
standing the heavy storm that had set in the day before 
and raged all night, in which they had to stand till 
daylight ; their arms were then unserviceable and they 
in poor condition for a fierce assault. After waiting 
till ten o'clock for the assault on Cheat Mountain, 
which did not take place, and which was to be the signal 
for the rest, they were withdrawn, and after waiting 
three days in front of the enemy, hoping he would 
come out of. his trenches, we returned to our position 
at this place. I cannot tell you my regret and morti- 
fication at the untoward events that caused the failure 
of the plan. I had taken every precaution to insure 
success, and counted on it ; but the Ruler of the universe 
willed otherwise, and sent the storm to disconcert the 
well-laid plan. We are no worse off now than before, 
except the disclosure of our plan, against which they 
will guard. We met with one heavy loss which grieves 
me deeply: Colonel Washington accompanied Fitz- 
hugh [his son] on a reconnoitring expedition. I fear 
they were carried away by their zeal and approached 
within the enemy's pickets. The first they knew there 
was a volley from a concealed party within a few yards 
of them. Three balls passed through the colonel's 
body, three struck his horse, and the horse of one of 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 109 

the men was killed. Fitzhugh mounted the colonel's 
horse and brought him off. I am much grieved. He 
was always anxious to go on these expeditions. This 
was the first day I assented. Since I had been thrown 
in such immediate relations with him, I had learned to 
appreciate him very highly. Morning and evening 
have I seen him on his knees praying to his Maker. 
'The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to 
heart; the merciful men are taken away, none consid- 
ering that the righteous are taken away from the- evil 
to come.' Mfty God have mercy on us all." 

And again on the 26th of the same month he writes 
from his camp on Sewell Mountain: ''I told you of the 
death of Colonel Washington. I grieve for his loss, 
though I trust him to the mercy of our heavenly 
Father. It is raining heavily. The men are all ex- 
posed on the mountains, with the enemy opposite to us. 
We are without tents, and for two nights I have lain 
buttoned up in my overcoat. To-day my tent came 
up, and I am in it, yet I fear I shall not sleep for think- 
ing of the poor men. I have no doubt the socks you 
mentioned will be very acceptable to the men here and 
elsewhere. If you can send them here I will distribute 
to the most needy." 

In a private letter to Governor Letcher, dated Sep- 
tember 17, 1861, he makes no mention of his personal 
disappointment; that was for his wife alone. He 
simply states that ''he was sanguine of success in at- 
tacking the enemy's works on Rich Mountain"; that 
"the troops intended for the surprise had reached 
their destination, having traversed twenty miles of 



no ROBERT E. LEE 

steep and rugged mountain paths, and the last day 
through a terrible storm, which had lasted all night, 
in which they had to stand, drenched to the skin, in a 
cold rain"; that he ''waited for an attack on Cheat 
Mountain, which was to be the signal, till 10 a. m., but 
the signal did not come. The chance for surprise was 
gone. The provisions of the men had been destroyed 
the preceding day by the storm. They had nothing 
to eat that morning, and could not hold out another 
day, and were obliged to be withdrawn. This, Gov- 
ernor," he writes, ''is for your own eye. Please do 
not speak of it ; we must try again. Our greatest loss 
is the death of my dear friend, Colonel Washington. 
He and my son were reconnoitring the front of the 
enemy. They came afterward upon a concealed party, 
who fired upon them within twenty yards, and the 
Colonel fell, pierced by three balls. My son's horse re- 
ceived three shots, but he escaped on the Colonel's horse. 
His zeal for the cause to which he had devoted himself 
carried him too far." 

The second opportunity which apparently offered it- 
self and was allowed by Lee to pass fruitlessly by was 
when Rosecrans's army, which lay before him at Sewell 
Mountain, was allowed to slip away unmolested. 

Reynolds having refused to be drawn out of his posi- 
tion, Lee turned his attention to the western section in 
the hope of destroying Rosecrans, and leaving General 
H. R. Jackson to hold Reynolds if possible, Lee ad- 
dressed himself to the situation in the Kanawha Valley. 
Riding through the mountains, "attended by a single 
subaltern/' he visited the commands of Generals Floyd 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 111 

and Wise, whose rivalries threatened the destruction 
of both commands. His object was to put an end to 
their strife, bring them together, and get from their 
united forces the power to crush Rosecrans, who was 
stronger than either. Nothing could be in greater 
contrast than the long, heated letters of the two sub- 
ordinates, and the brief, calm replies of the trained, 
equable-tempered, well-poised Lee. 

Rosecrans lay on top of Sewell Mountain, in a strongly 
fortified position, and Lee posted himself on the oppo- 
site crest, expecting that Rosecrans would attack him. 
Rosecrans, however, after threatening to attack, sud- 
denly withdrew his army by night. Lee gave as his 
reason for his apparent non-action, that he was con- 
fident of defeating Rosecrans by a flanking movement 
which he had planned for the following night, and that 
he "could not afford to sacrifice five or six hundred of 
his people to silence public clamor." In a letter to his 
wife, dated October 7, from Sewell Mountain, Lee 
gives an insight into his views, and incidentally touches 
on the part that politics was playing in the Southern 
army. He says: "The enemy was threatening an at- 
tack, which was continued till Saturday night, when, 
under cover of darkness and our usual mountain mist, 
he suddenly withdrew. Your letter, with the socks, 
was handed to me when I was preparing to follow. I 
could not at the time attend to either, but I have since; 
and as I found Perry [his colored servant from Arling- 
ton] in desperate need, I bestowed a couple of pairs on 
him as a present from you; the others I have put in 
my trunk, and suppose they will fall to the lot of Mere- 



112 ROBERT E. LEE 

dith [a colored servant from the White House], into 
the state of whose hose I have not yet inquired. 
Should any sick man require them first he shall have 
them, but Meredith will have no one near to supply 
him but me, and will naturally expect that attention. 
The water is almost as bad here as in the mountams I 
left. There was a drenching rain yesterday, and as I 
left my overcoat in camp, I was thoroughly wet from 
head to foot. It has been raining ever since, and is 
now coming down with a will ; but I have my clothes 
out on the bushes, and they will be well washed. The 
force of the enemy, estimated by prisoners captured, 
is put down at from 17,000 to 20,000— General Floyd 
thinks 18,000. I do not think it exceeds 9,000 or 
10,000, but it exceeds ours. I wish he had attacked, 
as I believe he would have been repulsed with great 
loss. The rumbling of his wheels, etc., were heard by 
our pickets; but as that was customary at night in 
moving and placing his cannon, the officer of the day, 
to whom it was reported, paid no particular attention 
to it, supposing it to be a preparation for an attack in 
the morning. When day appeared the bird had flown, 
and the misfortune was that the reduced condition of 
our horses for want of provender, exposure to cold 
rains in these mountains, and want of provisions for 
the men prevented the vigorous pursuit of following 
up that had been prepared. We can only get up pro- 
visions from day to day, which paralyzes our opera- 
tions. I am sorry, as you say, that the movements of 
the armies cannot keep pace with the expectations of 
the editors of papers. I know they can regulate mat- 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 113 

ters satisfactory to themselves on paper. I wish they 
could do so in the field. No one wishes them more 
success than I do, and would be happy to see them have 
full swing. General Floyd has three editors on his 
staff. I hope something will be done to please them." 

When it was all over in Western Virginia, one of his 
officers, who had been with him there (General Starke), 
asked Lee why he had not fought Rosecrans, as the 
forces were about equal, and the Confederates were 
ready and anxious for a fight, and felt certain of a vic- 
tory. Lee's reply was that while his men were in good 
spirits, and would doubtless have done their duty, a 
battle then would have been without substantial re- 
sults, owing to their being seventy miles from the rail- 
road, their base of supplies, with the ordinary roads 
almost impassable, and that ''ii he had fought and 
won the battle and Rosecrans had retreated, he would 
have been compelled to fall back at last to the source 
of supplies." 

''But," said General Starke, "your reputation was 
suffering, the press was denouncing you, your own 
State was losing confidence in you, and the army 
needed a victory to add to its enthusiasm." 

To this Lee replied, with a smile: ''I could not afford 
to sacrifice the lives of five or six hundred of my people 
to silence public clamor." 

The "public clamor" over Lee's failure was bitter 
and persistent, but he remained unruffled by it. With 
characteristic calm he simply stated that it was "only 
natural that such hasty conclusions should be reached," 
and gave his opinion that it was "better not to attempt 



114 ROBERT E. LEE 

a justification or defence, but to go steadily on in the 
discharge of our duty to the best of our ability, leav- 
ing all else to the calmer judgment of the future, and 
to a kind Providence." Long afterward, Mr. Davis 
wrote how, when ''Lee was unjustly criticised for that 
campaign," he ''magnanimously declined to make an 
official report, which would have exonerated himself 
by throwing the responsibility of the failure upon 
others." ^ This would have been alien to Lee's nature, 
/ffll through the war he assumed the responsibility^ 
'even when, as at Gettysburg, his orders were not car- \ 
vHed out, and the failure was manifestly due to others. ^ 
He had no editors on his staff. Indeed, at this period 
he had only two aides-de-camp, Colonel Washington and 
Colonel Taylor, of whom the former was, as has been 
stated, killed in a reconnoissance on Cheat Mountain. 
Thus fell the last of the name who owned Mount 
Vernon. 

The first campaign in which Lee engaged was thus, 
like Washington's first campaign, conducted with 
adverse fortune. Had Washington's military career 
closed after the retreat from Long Island, he would 
have been reckoned simply a brave man and a stark 
fighter, but one unequal to general command. Had 
Lee's career ended after the campaign in Western 
Virginia, when he was derisively characterized in the 
anti-administration press of Richmond as "Evacuating 
Lee," he would have been known in history only as a 
fine organizer, a capital scout, and a brilliant engineer 
of unusual gallantry whose abilities as a commander 

•Taylor's "Lee," p. 47. 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 115 

were not superior to those of the mediocre officer who 
opposed him in that experimental campaign, and were 
possibly equal only to the command of a brigade or, at 
best, of a division. But the South and fame awaited 
his opportunity. 

Happily for the South, Mr. Davis knew Lee better 
than those who were so clamorous against him, and 
the autumn having closed the campaign in Western 
Virginia, and the sea cities along the Atlantic coast 
sorely needing protection from the blockading fleet, Lee 
was despatched to the South to design and construct 
a general system of coast-defences along the Atlantic 
seaboard. It must have irked him, with his clear vis- 
ion of the outlook, to have been relegated for months 
to the seacoast of the Carolinas to work among the 
bayous and swamps — making bricks without straw — 
while the enemy not only swept the South-west, but 
got together a great army to move on Richmond. But 
though he spoke privately of it as "another forlorn 
hope like that in Western Virginia," no hint to the 
outside world escaped him. He was doing his duty. 
And whatever he may have thought of the task, it was 
one in which he displayed such genius that he rendered 
the coast cities of Georgia and South Carolina impregna- 
ble against all assaults by sea. Protected by his chain of 
forts, they stood as memorials of his genius until Sher- 
man, with his victorious army, attacked them by land. 

"It must be admitted," says Fitz Lee, in his "Life of 
Lee," "that General Lee retired from Western Virginia 
with diminished military reputation." This is far from 
a complete statement of the feeling as to him at this 



116 ROBERT E. LEE 

time. He was charged with incompetence, with being 
''too tender to shed blood," and with ''impressing with 
a showy presence" and "an historic name" rather than 
with soldierly qualities. When he was assigned to 
duty in the South, a protest was made against his 
being sent there. Mr. Davis felt it necessary to write 
to the Governor of South Carolina, defending his as- 
signment. He declared: "If General Lee is not a gen- 
eral, I have none to send you." To all of this Lee 
made no reply. He simply proceeded with his duty, 
and amid the swamps of South Carolina and Georgia, 
labored for four months with a zeal which could not 
have been excelled had he commanded an army. 

The Hon. Alexander H. Stevens gives a picture of 
Lee at this time. He says : 

"The Confederate Government had adopted the plan 
of Austria, at the period when Napoleon the First so 
nearly wiped her off the map of Europe, and endeavored 
to 'cover everything' with the armies. The army at 
Centreville was little more than a mob clamoring for 
leave of absence, and with seldom a day's rations 
ahead, and General Lee was sent to repair the disasters 
of Hilton Head and Beaufort, S. C, by the impossible 
task of engineering sufficient fortifications for a thou- 
sand miles of mingled sea-coast and inland swamps. I 
remember seeing him in Savannah, conspicuous by 
the blue uniform which he was the last of the Con- 
federates to put off, scarcely noticed among the gray 
uniforms of the new volunteers, and the least likely of 
all men to become the first character in the war for 
States Rights." 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 117 

His letters give a clear picture of the difficulties of 
protecting these seaport towns against a navy without 
some sort of navy to oppose it. On February 8, 1862, 
he writes his wife from Savannah: '^I wrote you the 
day I left Coosawhatchie. I have been here ever 
since, endeavoring to push forward the works for the 
defence of the city. Guns are scarce, as well as ammu- 
nition. I shall have to bring up batteries from the 
coast, I fear, to provide for this city. Our enemies 
are trying to work their way through the creeks and 
soft marshes along the interior of the coast, which 
communicate with the sounds and sea, through which 
the Savannah flows, and thus avoid the entrance to 
the river, conmianded by Fort Pulaski. Their boats 
require only seven feet of water to float them, and the 
tide rises seven feet, so that at high water they can 
work their way and rest on the mud at low. I hope, 
however, we shall be able to stop them, and my daily 
prayer to the Giver of all victory is to enable us to do 
so. We must make up our minds to meet with re- 
verses and overcome them. But the contest must be 
long, and the whole country has to go through much 
suffering. It is necessary we should be humble and 
taught to be less boastful, less selfish, and more de- 
voted to right and justice to all the world." 

And again from the same place he says, on February 
23: "The news from Tennessee and North Carolina is 
not at all cheering. Disasters seem to be thickening 
around us. It calls for renewed energies and redoubled 
strength on our part. I fear our soldiers have not re- 
alized the necessity of endurance and labor, and that 



118 ROBERT E. LEE 

it is better to sacrifice themselves for our cause. God, 
I hope, will shield us and give us success. I hear the 
enemy is progressing slowly in his designs. His gun- 
boats are pushing up all the creeks and marshes to the 
Savannah, and have obtained a position so near the 
river as to shell the steamers navigating it. I am en- 
gaged in constructing a line of defence at Fort Jackson, 
which, if time permits, and guns can be obtained, I 
hope will keep them out." 

As McClellan prepared to move on Richmond with 
the great army which he had been organizing and 
equipping all winter, so threatening became the situa- 
tion there, and so deep an impression had Lee's work 
in preparing the defences of the Southern States made 
on the people, that they began to look to him once 
more, and later the Confederate Congress passed an 
act creating the office of commander-in-chief for him. 
This act President Davis vetoed as unconstitutional, 
he, himself, by the constitution, being the commander- 
in-chief of the naval and military forces of the Con- 
federate States. He, however, recalled Lee to Rich- 
mond, and on March 13, 1862, issued the following 
order: 

''General Robert E. Lee is assigned to duty at the 
seat of government, and, under the direction of the 
President, is charged with the conduct of the military 
operations in the armies of the Confederacy." 

Mr. Stevens's comment on this is that "again he 
had a barren though difficult honor thrust upon him." 

Mr. Davis, on the other hand, declared that when 
General Lee took command of the Army of Northern 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA . 119 

Virginia, he was in command of all the armies of the 
Confederate States by his order of assignment, and 
that Lee continued in this general command of the 
Army of Northern Virginia as long as he would resist 
Lee's opinion that it was necessary for him to be re- 
lieved of one of these two duties. But it is manifest 
that Lee was "under the direction of the President." 

Mr. Stephens states that he did much to improve the 
army as chief of staff under Mr. Davis, and was nomi- 
nally head of the army, but soon asked to be relieved 
from responsibility with no power. During this period, 
however, his great engineering abilities were exercised 
to prepare the defences of Richmond against the com- 
ing storm. And among other benefits that the Con- 
federate capital now derived from his labors were the 
works at Drewry's and Chaffin's Bluffs, on the James, to 
which were due, not long afterward, the repulse of the 
Federal gunboats, and the preservation of the city 
when, on Johnston's retiring up the Peninsula in May, 
Norfolk was abandoned, and the James was thrown 
open to the Federal fleet. But for this work of Lee's, 
Richmond might have become untenable before Mc- 
Clellan crossed the Chickahominy. 

Thus Lee, in the shadow of the vast preparations 
making at Washington for a great invasion of Virginia, 
was, in March, 1862, called back to Richmond, to ad- 
vise the President of the Confederacy. The need was 
urgent, for a few weeks later McClellan, with Johnston 
falling back slowly before him, was marching steadily 
up the Peninsula, with an army the like of which had 
never been commanded by one man. 



120 ROBERT E. LEE 

As soon as Lee was brought back from the South, 
he revolutionized the plan of campaign hitherto fol- 
lowed. The South was already being shut in and 
throttled. Her sea-coast cities were being captured, 
her ports blockaded, and her country cut in two. His 
clear vision saw the imperative necessity of substitu- 
ting an aggressive for a defensive policy, and he un- 
leashed the eager Jackson on the armies in the Valley 
of Virginia, keeping them fully occupied, and so alarm- 
ing Washington as to hold McDowell on the north 
side of the Rappahannock and withhold his 40,000 
men from swelling McClellan's already powerful army 
on the Peninsula. Within a month after he was placed 
in actual command he perfected his plans and fell 
upon McClellan, and defeated the greatest army that 
had ever stood on American soil. The next three 
years proved beyond cavil that in the first campaign, 
as always, all that could have been done with his 
forces by any one was done by Lee. Within one year, 
indeed, he had laid the foundation of a fame as a great 
captain as enduring as Marlborough's or Wellington's. 

Three years from this time "this colonel of cavalry" 
surrendered a muster-roll of 26,000 men, of which 
barely 8,000 muskets showed up, to an army of over 
130,000 men, commanded by the most determined and 
able general that the North had found, and, defeated, 
sheathed his sword with what will undoubtedly be- 
come the reputation of the first captain and the no- 
blest public character of his time. 

In this period he had fought three of the greatest 
campaigns in all the history of war, and had destroyed 



LEE IN WEST VIRGINIA 121 

the reputation of more generals than any captain had 
ever done in the same space of time. His last campaign 
alone, even ending as it did in defeat, would have suf- 
ficed to fix him forever as a star of the first magnitude 
in the constellation of great captains. Though he suc- 
cumbed at last to the '^ policy of attrition," pursued by 
his patient and able antagonist, it was not until Grant 
had lost in the campaign over 124,000 men, better 
armed and equipped — two men for every one that Lee 
had had in his army from the beginning of the cam- 
paign. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE SITUATION WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 

When McClellan moved on Richmond, the fortunes 
of the South appeared to be at a lower ebb than they 
ever were again until the winter of 1864. The long 
period since the victory of Manassas had been allowed 
to pass without any such active operations as would 
keep at white heat the flame of enthusiasm which pre- 
ceded that event. The government of the Confederacy 
held to the doctrine that the war was one solely defen- 
sive. With even more disastrous reasoning, if pos- 
sible, it put in practice another theory, that a demo- 
cratic army should elect its officers. In the spring of 
1862, a general election was, by direction of the govern- 
ment, held by the Confederate army, then lying in the 
face of the enemy, by which all officers from colonel 
down were voted for by the men of the various com- 
mands. Such a measure was wholly destructive of 
discipline, and Lee, in one of his letters, refers to being 
in the midst of "the fermentation" due to the reorgan- 
ization of the army. 

The general plan for prosecution of the war on the 
part of the North was the same that had been laid 
down at the beginning: that is, to hold the border 
States, to blockade the Southern ports and attack 
by sea, and to seize the navigable rivers running far 

122 



WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 123 

up into her territory, especially the Mississippi, and 
thereby cut the South in two. By the end of spring, 
1862, nearly the whole of this far-reaching and saga- 
cious plan had been measurably accomplished. Mary- 
land, Missouri, and Kentucky had been held firmly, 
and in all three States, except Missouri, secession had 
been forcibly prevented, while Missouri had been sub- 
stantially conquered. 

The possession of a fleet gave to the Union forces the 
command of the Chesapeake, of the Potomac, of the 
York, and (after the sinking of the Merrimac by her 
commander) of the James, to within less than half a 
day's march of Richmond. This was quickly followed 
by an attempt on Richmond by the Federal fleet, 
which General Johnston declared a greater danger than 
the Federal army. The fleet, under Commodore John 
Rodgers, consisting of the Monitor, the Galena, and 
three other gunboats, ascended the James to within 
eight miles of Richmond, but were, on May 15, repulsed 
by the batteries atDrewry's Bluff, where Lee had hastily 
constructed works which stood till abandoned, on April 
2, 1865. 

In January, Thomas had won the battle of Mill 
Springs, in Kentucky, which made the Union forces 
dominant in that region. In February (6th), Fort 
Henry, on the Tennessee, had been captured, and four 
days later (the 10th) Fort Donelson, on the Cumber- 
land, had surrendered unconditionally to a general 
hitherto almost unknown, to whom the government 
had been inclined to turn the cold shoulder, but who 
was to become better known thereafter. The gallant 



124 ROBERT E. LEE 

Buckner, having refused to escape with the other gen- 
erals and leave his men, had surrendered with the lat- 
ter. By these victories the upper Mississippi, the 
Cumberland, and the Tennessee came into the control 
of the Federal forces, and all that was needed was to 
obtain mastery of the lower Mississippi to leave the 
Confederacy rent in twain. The forts at Hatteras In- 
let had been reduced in August (28th). Hilton Head 
and Beaufort, in North Carolina, had been captured, 
following Admiral DuPont's reduction of the forts on 
Port Royal Inlet, and Roanoke Island and Newberne, 
N. C, had been captured in the first half of March, 
1862. On April 6, Albert Sidney Johnston, deemed up 
till now the South's most brilliant soldier, had sub- 
stantially won a battle against the captor of Forts 
Henry and Donelson, but had been slain in the hour of 
victory, and that night Buell, having reached the field 
with fresh troops, the Confederate forces had been in 
turn defeated. It is probable that but for the fall of 
Johnston, who bled to death through neglecting his 
wound in his eagerness to push his victory on the 6th, 
Grant's fortunate star might have set at Shiloh instead 
of rising higher and higher in the next three years, to 
reach its zenith at Appomattox. As it was, the upper 
Mississippi with its great tributaries was in complete 
control of the Union, and on April 24, Flag Officer Far- 
ragut, himself a Tennessean, with a powerful fleet ran 
up the Mississippi, successfully passing the forts (Jack- 
son and St. Philip) guarding its mouth, and reached 
New Orleans, which city was soon occupied by Butler 
(May 1), its fall being quickly followed by the fall of 



WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 125 

Pensacola. By this time all the important Florida sea- 
port tawns were in the possession of the Federal forces, 
and all these captures, except Roanoke Island and 
Newberne, had been effected by the navy/ Thus, the 
Mississippi was open from its mouth to Port Hudson, 
and even that fort and the yet more threatening forts 
at Vicksburg could be passed by the Federal gunboats, 
though not without danger, which it was important to 
put an end to. The main object of attack, however, 
now was Richmond. 

The very next day after the rout at Bull Run, Mr. 
Lincoln, awakening to the gravity of the situation, had 
called for 500,000 men, and the North had responded 
with fervor. Between the 4th of August and the 10th 
of October more than 110 regiments and 30 battalions, 
comprising at least 112,000 men, were added to the 
forces in Washington and its neighborhood.^ The 
ablest organizer in the army had been called to the 
task of organization, and proved to have a genius for 
it. All autumn and winter he labored at the work, 
and when spring came Washington had been strongly 
fortified, and McClellan found himself at the head of 
possibly the largest, best equipped, and best drilled 
army ever commanded by one man in modern times. 

Thus, the spring of 1862 had been spent by the gov- 
ernment of the United States in preparation for a cam- 
paign against Richmond which should retrieve the 
errors and disasters of the preceding year, and by 
making certain the capture of Richmond, "the heart 

» Ropes's "Story of the Civil War," I, pp. 182-5. 
2 Ibid., p. 167. 



126 ROBERT E. LEE 

of the Confederacy/' should end the war by one great 
and decisive stroke. The new Federal commander 
proved in the sequel not to be as great a fighter as, at 
least, one of his successors. But whatever the inomedi- 
ate result was, McClellan taught the North the way to 
organize and equip a great army. It was well said that 
without McClellan there had been no Grant. And 
McClellan had difficulties to contend with in the panic- 
struck and urgent authorities in Washington which 
Grant was wise enough to relieve himself of by previ- 
ous stipulation. 

Several plans for attacking Richmond still presented 
themselves, as at the beginning of hostilities, all of 
which included the idea of cutting off the city from 
communication with the south-west. One was by way 
of the Shenandoah Valley, striking the Virginia Central 
Railroad at Staunton or Waynesboro, and marching on 
Richmond by way of Charlottesville, whence a railway 
line ran to South-west Virginia and Tennessee ; one by 
way of Manassas; one by the Chesapeake Bay and the 
lower Rappahannock; and finally, one by way of the 
Chesapeake Bay and the peninsula lying between the 
York and the James, which presented the opportunity, 
under certain contingencies, of seizing Petersburg and 
isolating Richmond from the South. 

The practicability of all of these plans of invasion 
had to be considered quite as carefully in Richmond as 
in Washington, and the possibility of each one of them 
being adopted had to be provided against. As the 
junction at Manassas had proved to be the key to the 
situation in the first effort, and its use had enabled the 



WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 127 

valley forces under Joseph E. Johnston to be brought 
across the Blue Ridge in the nick of time for the final 
movement in the battle there, so it still remained the 
most important point in Central Virginia, and Johns- 
ton's army was placed there to guard it and at the 
same time keep Washington in a state of anxiety. 
The Washington authorities were, for manifest reasons, 
in favor of trying their fortune again at this point. 
The armies of Fremont and Banks in the Shenandoah 
Valley were within a few days' march and might 
render assistance, and at least it rendered Washington 
more secure. McClellan, however, favored the route 
by the Rappahannock. McClellan's first plan was to 
march to Annapolis, and then transport his army, 
140,000 men, to Urbana, on the south bank of the 
Rappahannock, and "occupy Richmond before it could 
be strongly reinforced." ^ 

This plan he was forbidden to adopt, though he con- 
sidered it the best of all the plans, and he thereupon 
selected the route by way of Fortress Monroe and the 
Peninsula, against the views of the government author- 
ities, who greatly desired him to adopt the overland 
route by Manassas, across which Johnston lay with an 
army then believed to number over 100,000 men, but 
really containing certainly less than half that number.^ 
Indeed, it was actually about 35,000 men. 

Illness during the autumn and early winter of 1861 
prevented McClellan's acting with the efficiency which 
he might otherwise have shown; but even more disas- 

' John C. Ropes's "Story of the Civil War," I, p. 266, citing Mc- 
Clellan's letter to Stanton (5 W. R., 45). ' Ibid. 



128 ROBERT E. LEE 

trous than this was his determination not to move 
until he had an army sufficiently great and properly 
organized to make his success assured. For this rea- 
son mainly he resisted alike the importunities of the 
President and the Secretary of War and the clamor of 
the public until on toward the spring, by which time 
he had sacrificed the good-will of the former and the 
confidence of both. 

Jackson, acting on a suggestion of Lee's, settled the 
question of the Shenandoah Valley plan by the battle 
of Winchester and his brilliant retreat between two 
converging armies down the valley, followed by the 
twin victories of Cross Keys and Port Republic. The 
authorities in Washington decided against the lower 
Rappahannock plan, and gave McClellan his choice 
between the overland route by way of Manassas and 
the Fortress Monroe plan, and he states that "of course 
he selected the latter," adding a jibe at the fears of the 
administration and a suggestion of their disloyalty to 
him.^ 

The advantages of the route by the Chesapeake Bay 
were obvious. The possession of the navy gave the 
Union Government command of the bay and its navi- 
gable tributaries, enabling them to transport troops 
and munitions of war to a point within a convenient 
distance of Richmond. The chief objections to the 
selection of this line lay, first, in the danger of denuding 
the defences of Washington by withdrawing so large a 
force while the Confederate army under Johnston lay 
on the Rapidan and the audacious Jackson was oper- 

> "McClellan's Own Story," p. 227. 



WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 129 

ating in the Shenandoah Valley, and, later on, in the 
difficulties occasioned by the operations in the Chesa- 
peake of the new floating war machine, the Virginia, 
which, with her awkward armor of railway iron, ap- 
peared a sort of Goliath of the sea. The only other 
serious difficulties were the presence of the heavy forti- 
fications at Yorktown and Gloucester Point, guarding 
the mouth of the York River. Still, McClellan had no 
doubt of being able, with the aid of the navy, to reduce 
these forts and open the York to the passage of his 
transports. 

This decision was reached by him in the first week 
of March, and on the 9th of March Johnston, under 
orders from Mr. Davis, withdrew his army from Ma- 
nassas and fell back to the Rappahannock, and thence 
toward Richmond, immediately on which McClellan 
occupied Manassas with the greater part of his army,^ 
to give them training and with a view to opening the 
railway from Manassas, where Banks's head-quarters 
were to be, to Strasburg, in the Shenandoah Valley. 

About the middle of March McClellan began to ship 
his troops to Fortress Monroe, a movement which pro- 
ceeded so rapidly that by the end of the month he 
had three corps on the spot, and was "eagerly expecting 
others"; and Johnston thereupon, "his movements con- 
trolled by McClellan," marched to the Peninsula, where 
Magruder with only some 13,000 men at Yorktown had 
handled them so ably that McClellan was led to believe 
his force much larger than it was. 

General Lee wrote to his wife from Richmond, 

» Ropes's "Story of the Civil War," I, p. 225. 



130 ROBERT E. LEE 

March 22, 1862: ''Our enemies are pressing us every- 
where, and our army is in the fermentation of reorgani- 
zation. I pray that the great God may aid us, and 
am endeavoring by every means in my power to bring 
out the troops and hasten them to their destination." 
General Lee was now military adviser to the Presi- 
dent, and thenceforth, though he was till almost the 
very end of the war "under the direction of the Presi- 
dent," and never had a free hand, he had at least a 
potent hand in the conduct of the military operations 
of the Confederacy. 

Having found his advance up the Peninsula between 
the York and the James, for the purpose of enveloping 
Yorktown, barred by the erection of strong works along 
the line of the Warwick River, extending entirely across 
the Peninsula, McClellan, instead of assaulting imme- 
diately, being under the impression that Magruder was 
far stronger than he really was, laid siege to Yorktown, 
and made ready with elaborate preparation to assault 
on the 5th of May. On the night of the 3d, however, 
Magruder, acting under the orders of Johnston, who, 
as stated, on McClellan 's landing in Virginia had with- 
drawn his army from the Rapidan and now commanded 
in the Peninsula, skilfully withdrew his troops and re- 
tired on Williamsburg. So that McClellan, who had 
spent weeks in preparation for the capture, shipping 
heavy ordnance from the Northern arsenals and en- 
gaging the best engineers in the service, found the post 
abandoned, and got only the abandoned heavy guns 
which Magruder had been unable to carry off. 

Differing from Johnston, Lee's temperament inclined 



WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 131 

him to more audacious tactics than the Fabian poHcy 
which the latter inchned to pursue. He would have 
had Johnston force the issue on the Rapidan before 
giving McClellan the opportunity to mass his army 
on the Peninsula, and now that the latter event had 
occurred, he was in favor of forwarding troops and de- 
livering battle before he should advance on Richmond. 

The advance of McClellan on Richmond with an army 
of 115,000 men immediately under his command, be- 
sides the reserve of 40,000 under McDowell on the 
Rappahannock, made the Peninsula the field of the 
most important operations which had yet been at- 
tempted, and should they be successfully conducted, 
they were likely to decide the issue of the war. Op- 
posed to him, under the immediate command of Gen- 
eral Johnston, were about 53,000 men, with 18,000 at 
Norfolk commanded by General Huger, and something 
over 16,000 in the valley, making a total of 87,000 men.^ 

In this exigency, a conference was held in Richmond 
between the President, the Secretary of War, and 
General Lee, to which were also invited Major-Generals 
Smith 8.nd Longstreet, to discuss the best method of 
meeting the situation, whose gravity all recognized. 

General Johnston proposed that, without attempting 
to make a stand on the lower Peninsula along Ma- 
gruder's line, which would only delay the Federal army 
in its approach, all the available forces of the Confed- 
eracy, including those in the Carolinas and Georgia, 
with those at Norfolk, should be brought together for 
an attack on McClellan at the moment he began to be- 

» Johnston's "Narrative," pp. 115, 116. 



132 ROBERT E. LEE 

siege Richmond. He believed that such an attack, 
coming as a surprise to McClellan ''would be almost 
certain to win, and the enemy, divided a hundred miles 
away from the Potomac, their place of refuge, could 
scarcely escape destruction. Such a victory, he urged, 
would decide not only the campaign, but the war, while 
the present plan could produce no decisive results." 

This plan was opposed, the Secretary of War, Gen- 
eral Randolph, who had been a naval officer, objecting 
because it involved "at least the temporary abandon- 
ment of Norfolk, which would involve the probable loss 
of the materials for many vessels of war contained in 
the navy yard there." 

"Lee opposed it," states Johnston, "because he 
thought that the withdrawal from South Carolina and 
Georgia of any considerable number of troops would 
expose the important seaports of Charleston and Sa- 
vannah to the danger of capture. He thought, too, 
that the Peninsula had excellent fields of battle for a 
small army contending with a great one, and that we 
should for that reason make the contest with McClel- 
lan's army there." 

"Longstreet," adds Johnston, "owing to his deaf- 
ness, took little part in the conference." 

Longstreet, who states that he and General Smith 
were invited by General Johnston to accompany him, 
intimates that he heard quite enough at the conference; 
that he had a plan of his own, which he intended to 
suggest, by which he was to join General Jackson in 
the Shenandoah Valley "with sufficient reinforcements 
to strike the Federal forces in front of him a sudden, 



WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 133 

severe blow," cross the Potomac, threaten Washing- 
ton, and call McClellan to his own capital. This plan, 
he states, he had proposed to Jackson a few days before. 

On prefacing his views, however, with the statement 
that he knew General McClellan, 'Hhat he was a mili- 
tary engineer, and would move his army by careful 
measurement and preparation, and that he would not 
be ready to advance before the 1st of May, the Presi- 
dent interrupted and spoke of McClellan's high at- 
tainments and capacity in a style indicating that he 
did not care to hear any one talk who did not have the 
same appreciation of our great adversary." And he 
adds that, ''remembering that McClellan had been a 
special favorite with Mr. Davis when he was Secretary 
of War in the Pierce administration, and Mr. Davis 
appearing to take such reflections upon his favorites 
as somewhat personal, he concluded that his opinion 
had only been asked through recognition of his pres- 
ence, not that it was wanted, and said no more." ^ 

Singularly enough, Longstreet makes no mention of 
General Lee's taking any part in the conference. The 
interesting fact, however, is established by General 
Long, that Lee was for fighting McClellan on the Penin- 
sula, on one of ''the excellent fields of battle for a small 
army contending with a great one." "The President," 
continues Johnston in his narrative, "decided in favor 
of the opinion of General Lee, and ordered General 
Johnston to take command of the Army of the Penin- 
sula, adding the departments of Norfolk and the Penin- 
sula to that of Northern Virginia." 

* Longstreet's "From Manassas to Appomattox," p. 66. 



134 ROBERT E. LEE 

General Johnston assumed his new command on the 
17th of April, and proceeded to finish the works begun 
by Magruder along the line of the Warwick River. 

Lee's views, however, were not adopted, and though 
Johnston had placed his army between McClellan and 
Richmond, the advance on the Confederate capital was 
steady and disheartening. A sharp battle was fought 
at Williamsburg, the ancient capital of the Old Do- 
minion, in which, as very often occurred, both sides 
claimed the advantage; but if Napoleon's dictum be 
sound, that that side is to be deemed the victor which 
is able to advance first, the balance was in favor of the 
Union arms, even though they lost more men and five 
guns. The true advantage to the Confederates was 
that they were able, against McClellan's earnest efforts, 
to bring off the garrisons of the forts at the mouth of 
the York, extricate their trains, and retire leisurely up 
the Peninsula to the defensive position behind the 
Chickahominy, in the neighborhood of Richmond. The 
evacuation, however, of Yorktown and the withdrawal 
of Johnston's army necessitated the evacuation of Nor- 
folk and Portsmouth. 

The iron-clad Virginia — the old Merrimac, by which 
latter name she was, and doubtless will continue to be, 
better known — being unable to take the seas, partly 
because of her slow rate of speed, which prevented her 
passing the Federal batteries at the mouth of Hampton 
Roads, and yet more because of her inability to secure 
coal and other stores, and being unable because of her 
heavy draught to go up the James, was, on the 11th 
of May, sunk by her commander, Conmiodorc Tatnall. 



WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 135 

Thus, the James as well as the York was thenceforth 
open to the Federal gunboats and transports as far 
up as Drewry's Bluff, a high point commanding the 
narrows of the James, only seven or eight miles below 
Richmond. 

Thus, as the spring closed while the fortunes of the 
South had waned lamentably in the South-west, the 
Confederate capital was menaced by an army which 
had forced its way up the Peninsula and was believed 
to be capable of taking Richmond whenever its general 
saw fit to deliver his assault. Feeling sure of it, Mc- 
Clellan approached leisurely up the north bank of 
the Chickahominy and entrenched his army in the po- 
sitions he secured from time to time, until he was 
within sight of the spires of Richmond, and on quiet 
nights his pickets could hear the sound of the city's 
bells pealing the hours. It was believed by many that 
Richmond was doomed, and there was even discussion 
of moving the seat of government to a more secure 
capital in the South. The situation was grave, indeed. 
McDowell, with 40,000 men, was at Fredericksburg on 
the Rappahannock, but sixty miles away, and was 
under stringent orders to effect a junction with Mc- 
Clellan, who, to get in touch with him and protect his 
base at West Point on the York, had reached out on 
the north side of the Chickahominy as far as Hanover 
Court House and the North Anna. Two armies, one 
under Banks in the Valley of Virginia and the other 
under Fremont to the westward, were keeping Stone- 
wall Jackson so fully engaged that he was making 
marches which gained for his infantry the appellation 



136 ROBERT E. LEE 

of "foot cavalry," and to hold his own he was forced 
to win two battles on two successive days. It is no 
wonder that the Confederate authorities should have 
regarded the situation with deep concern — even Mr. 
Davis, habitually so sanguine, speaking of ''the droop- 
ing cause of our country"^ — and that the Union 
authorities should have been correspondingly elated. 
Richmond, apparently to the latter, lay almost at the 
mercy of the overwhelming army which McClellan had 
organized and brought to her gates. The only bright 
spot on the horizon was the Shenandoah Valley, where 
Stonewall Jackson, unleashed by Lee, was with his 
gallant little army showing amazing results, and by 
his ''terrifying swiftness" and unexpected genius was 
keeping Washington in a panic, and withholding from 
McClellan's aid the forces under McDowell, Fremont, 
Milroy, Banks, and Shields, fully eight times the num- 
ber of men in his own command. He recognized the 
necessity of making such a show of force in the Shen- 
andoah Valley to the westward of Washington as 
would hold the Union forces there for the defence of 
Washington. 

It had been the plan of McClellan to have McDowell 
join him on the Peninsula with his corps, which would 
have brought his force before Richmond up to some 
150,000 men, and it had been the intention of the 
government at Washington to permit this plan to be 
carried out. They insisted, however, that McDowell, 
instead of going by water, should advance across coun- 

' Letter to General Joseph E. Johnston, May 11, 1862. (Ropes, II, 
p. 114.) 



WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 137 

try along the line of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, 
and Potomac Railway, and join McClellan in the low- 
lands of Hanover, thus keeping his forces in touch with 
Washington. The 26th of May was set for his ad- 
vance; but on the afternoon of that very day, owing 
to Jackson's "rapid and terrifying movements" in 
the valley of the Shenandoah, this order was, to the 
"amazement and regret" of both McDowell and McClel- 
lan, "suspended," and McDowell was ordered to send 
20,000 men directly to the Valley to aid in the capture 
of Jackson. The plan appeared feasible enough to 
civilians and office soldiers, but; as already stated, was 
frustrated by Jackson's brilliant extraction of his forces 
by his famous retreat from the Potomac to Strasburg, 
between the enemy's converging armies, and the sub- 
sequent victories of Cross Keys and Port Republic on 
June 8 and 9. 

The retirement of the Confederate forces on Rich- 
mond had enabled McClellan to proceed up the York to 
West Point, where the Mattapony and the Pamunkey 
Rivers join, forming the York. Here he established 
his base of supplies, and by a singular coincidence he 
established his head-quarters at "The White House," 
a plantation belonging to General Lee. From this 
point he pushed his advance forward toward Richmond, 
occupying the country l}ing to the northward of Rich- 
mond, and throwing his left, consisting of the Third 
and Fourth Corps, under Heintzelman and Keyes, 
across the Chickahominy, a small, sluggish river that 
flows south-westerly into the James through a wide, 
marshy bottom, densely timbered, and often broken 



138 ROBERT E. LEE 

into a number of channels. Uplands rise on both sides 
of the stream, and it is crossed only by the bridges on 
the roads to Richmond. The Fifth Corps remained on 
the northern side of the Chickahominy, guarding the 
line of communication with the York. 

Thus, McClellan's forces were divided by a stream 
which, although apparently insignificant during dry 
weather, was, when swollen by rains, a factor to be 
seriously reckoned with. 

In view of this division of his troops, Johnston had 
determined to attack him before any reinforcements 
could reach him from Fredericksburg, where McDowell 
lay with his 40,000 men, prepared to aid McClellan 
before Richmond, or Fremont in the valley of the 
Shenandoah, as need required. 

It was a region to which both commanders had 
looked forward as a probable battle-ground — a gener- 
ally level country, intersected by an occasional ravine 
or swamp, often heavily wooded, where some tribu- 
tary creek had worn its way deep through the alluvial 
soil, spreading out in the bottoms with impenetrable 
thickets. But McClellan had not reckoned on the di- 
vision of his army, which now left three of his corps 
(the Second, Fifth, and Sixth) on the north of the 
Chickahominy, while two (the Third and Fourth) were 
on the south of the stream. To meet this situation he 
took measures to establish partially a second base at 
Harrison's Landing, on the James, to which was due 
later on the preservation of his army. 

Through this region three roads ran from Richmond 
eastwardly, and substantially parallel to the James, 



WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 139 

known respectively as the Nine Mile Road, one fork of 
which ran to New Bridge, on the Chickahominy, the 
other to Fair Oaks Station, on the Richmond and York 
River Railroad; the Williamsburg Stage Road; and 
most southerly of all, the Charles City or River Road. 
Johnston had, in face of McClellan's steady advance, 
and, as stated, somewhat against the views of Lee, 
fallen back on Richmond, and, finding McClellan's 
army divided by the swollen Chickahominy, had, on 
May 31, attacked his left under Keyes at Seven Pines, 
and driven him back to Fair Oaks, possibly missing a 
complete victory only by reason of Longstreet's slow- 
ness; then, having been severely wounded, he had been 
forced to leave the field, and next day a renewal of the 
attack under General G. W. Smith had resulted in a re- 
pulse. In this battle Longstreet was to have charge 
of the general management of the operations along the 
New Bridge Road, and was to be assisted by Huger 
from the Charles City Road. By some error, however, 
in the orders, which were verbal, or in the understand- 
ing of these orders — first, questions arose between the 
two commanders; and secondly, the orders were not 
complied with promptly. Longstreet, instead of at- 
tacking in the morning by the New Bridge Road, 
moved to the south-east on the Williamsburg Road, 
and did not attack until after one o'clock, when, in- 
stead of concentrating and destroying, as was expected, 
Keyes's corps, which was stationed somewhat peril- 
ously far in advance of Heintzelman's force, he only 
defeated it and drove it in, where it was saved by the 
opportune arrival of Sedgwick's division of Sumner's 



140 ROBERT E. LEE 

corps, which had crossed the river at half-past twc, 
and reaching the field at five o'clock, had attacked in 
flank. Hill's gallant and persistent attack in the early 
afternoon carried the field; but it was too late to avail 
of the golden opportunity that had offered at the be- 
ginning of the day, and though it was a victory, and 
the Confederates captured 10 guns, 6,000 rnuskets, and 
5 colors, besides 347 prisoners,^ it was not the decisive 
victory it should have been, and the enemy was ready 
to fight again the next morning. 

On the eve of Seven Pines, Lee sent Colonel Long, 
of his staff, with a message to Johnston, 'Ho tell him 
that he would be glad to participate in the battle." 
He had no desire to interfere with his command, but 
simply wished to aid him on the field to the best of 
his ability, and in any manner in which his services 
would be of most value. Johnston, thanking him, 
invited him to ride down to the battle-field, and asked 
that he send him such reinforcements as he could.^ 

General Johnston, in command of the operations, 
was, about sunset, shot out of his saddle and severely 
wounded, and the general command devolved upon 
General Gustavus W. Smith. The battle was renewed 
the following morning by General Smith, who ordered 
Longstreet "to renew the engagement and to direct 
his attack toward the north," where lay Richardson's 
''powerful division" of Sumner's corps, that had crossed 
the river to the rescue the afternoon before; but Long- 
street seems to have believed that the entire Federal 
army was opposed to him, and to have been afraid 

' Ropes, II, pp. 152, 154. ''Long's "Lee," p. 158. 



WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 141 

of exposing his right flank to the troops of the Fourth 
Division, who still lay where they had been driven 
back the evening before. At any rate, he is charged 
by critics on both sides with having been "singularly 
lacking in energy and dash/' and with ''having made 
no serious effort to carry the Union lines." * Huger's 
brave brigades, under Armistead and Mahone, made a 
gallant attack, but were repulsed after hard fighting, 
and at two o'clock a new commander arrived on tlie 
field. 

It was in this crisis that Lee was placed in command. 
Lee had ridden down to the battle-field with President 
Davis while the fight was in progress, and when the 
wounding of Johnston was reported to the President, 
he informed Lee that he wished him to take charge. 
The next day he issued the order, as follows : 

Richmond, Va., June 1, 1862. 
General R. E. Lee. 

Sir: The unfortunate casualty which has deprived 
the army in front of Richmond of its immediate com- 
mander, General Johnston, renders it necessary to in- 
terfere temporarily with the duties to which you were 
assigned in connection with the general service, but 
only so far as to make you available for command in 
the field of a particular army. You will assume com- 
mand of the army in Eastern Virginia, and in North 
Carolina, and give such orders as may be needful and 
proper. 

Very respectfully, 

Jefferson Davis. 

» Ropes, II, p. 149. 



142 ROBERT E. LEE 

Lee thereupon issued his first order to the gallant 
army with which his fame was thenceforth to be so 
inseparably bound up. It ran: 

Special Orders No. 22. 

Head-quarters, Richmond, Va., June 1, 1862. 

In pursuance of the orders of the President, General 
R. E, Lee assumes command of the armies of Eastern 
Virginia and North Carolina. The unfortunate casualty 
that has deprived the army in front of Richmond of the 
valuable services of its able general, is not more deeply 
deplored by any member of the command than by its 
present commander. He hopes his absence will be but 
temporary, and while he will endeavor to the best of 
his ability to perform his duties, he feels he will be 
totally inadequate to the task unless he shall receive 
the cordial support of every officer and man. 

By order of General Lee. 

W. H. Taylor, 
Assistant Adjutant-General. 

The situation at Richmond when, in succession to 
Johnston, Lee was appointed in command of the Army 
of Northern Virginia was substantially this : The Con- 
federate troops, lying between Richmond and McClel- 
lan's army, numbered about 70,000 men. A steady 
retreat up the Peninsula had tended to impair their 
spirit, if not their morale. The single check given to 
McClellan at Williamsburg had resulted in nothing 
more practical than to allow time for the retirement on 
Richmond, and to teach McClellan a wholesome lesson 
of respect for his enemy. The attack at Seven Pines, 



WHEN LEE TOOK COMMAND 143 

on the afternoon of May 31, had been so gallantly 
pressed that it had resulted in a victory, but not the 
complete victory that had been expected. Owing to 
Longstreet's slowness and, possibly, to his half-heart- 
edness, which led him to wait until the afternoon 
before making the assault planned for the morning, 
thereby allowing Sunuier to cross the falling Chicka- 
hominy and save Keyes, and on the next day led him 
to attack Sumner with only three brigades instead of 
with his full force, the victory of the 31st had been fol- 
lowed by the repulse at Fair Oaks next day, when 
General G. W. Smith commanded. In the same way, 
a few weeks later, as Henderson points out, he became 
responsible for the frontal battle of Malvern Hill. 

It was characteristic of Lee that, although appointed 
to supersede General Smith on the 1st of June, he left 
him in actual conmaand in the battle of that day, only 
endorsing his orders, and aiding him in bringing rein- 
forcements from the conmaands of Ripley and Holmes.^ 

The fortunes of the Confederacy in the West and 
along the seaboard, as we have seen, were at this time 
at a low ebb, and McClellan was now apparently sure 
of the capture of the Confederate capital. Should it 
fall, Virginia was likely to be overrun by the forces of 
the Union, and the principal seat of war would be the 
South or the West. McClellan's army numbered about 
110,000 men, now well organized and fairly seasoned; 
his equipment was as good as the world could furnish, 
and he believed himself, and was believed to be, a 
young Napoleon. McDowell's army, was at Fredericks- 

'Fitz Lee's "Lee," p. 147. 



144 ROBERT E. LEE 

burg, only sixty miles away, clamorous to join him and 
participate in the glory of the capture of the "rebel capi- 
tal," and under orders to do so, while already, in the 
Shenandoah Valley, or ready to march thither, was 
Fremont with 20,000 men, all operating to unite and 
fall on Richmond. 

Such, in brief, was the situation when Lee assumed 
command, on June 1, 1862, and the fate of Richmond 
was placed in his hands. His prestige at this time was 
far from being what it soon afterward became, or even 
what it had been previous to the outbreak of the war. 
His ability as an engineer was recognized; but the 
proof of a general is victories, and that proof he had 
not given. 



CHAPTER VII 

BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 

Lee, thus called from the titular position of military 
adviser to the President to the command of the army 
defending Richmond, to take the place of Johnston, 
found himself in command of about 80,000 men— 70,000 
of whom were close by. 

Longstreet, who was given to being critical of Lee, 
as of many others, has an interesting account of Lee's 
action and the impression made by him when he first 
assumed command of the army which was to be thence- 
forth associated with his fame. The assignment of 
General Lee to the command was, he states, ''far from 
reconcihng the troops to the loss of their beloved chief, 
General Joseph E. Johnston, on whom all hearts leaned 
and whom all loved." ''Lee's experience in active 
field work had been limited to his West Virginia cam- 
paign, which was not successful." His services as an 
engineer had been able and as an engineer he had been 
"especially distinguished." "But officers of the line," 
he adds, "are not apt to look to the staff in choosing 
leaders of soldiers, either in tactics or strategy." 

"During the first week of his authority," he contin- 
ues, "Lee called his general officers to meet him on the 
Nine Mile Road for a general talk. This novelty was 
not reassuring, as experience had told that secrecy in 

145 



146 ROBERT E. LEE 

war was an essential clement of success; that public 
discussion and secrecy were incompatible." 

They met, and the generals talked. But as they rode 
homeward, it came to them that Lee had '^ disclosed 
nothing," ''and," says Longstreet, ''all rode back to 
their camps little wiser than when they went, except 
that they found General Lee's object was to learn of 
the temper of those of his officers whom he did not 
know, and of the condition and tone among their 
troops." Surely no bad illustration of the new com- 
mander's wisdom! 

One more personal touch follows. General Wliiting 
was afraid of bayous and parallels, and complained of 
the sickness in his command on account of his position 
at Fair Oaks, and asked that his command be given a 
better position. "Wliiting's Division was broken up," 
says Longstreet. "Three of his brigades were ordered 
to A. P. Hill's Division. He was permitted to choose 
two brigades that were to constitute his own command. 
Besides his own he selected Hood's Brigade. With 
these two he was ordered by way of Lynchburg to re- 
port to General Jackson in the valley district." Long- 
street's thrust at Wliiting throws unconsciously a ray 
on Lee. Whiting, however, was soon to come to Long- 
street's relief on the hills above Beaver Dam Creek, and 
within the month. Hood's Texans were to "put on im- 
mortality" by being the first to pierce Fitz John Por- 
ter's blazing lines. 

This was undoubtedly the same conference of which 
Mr. Davis speaks,* and at which he was present, having, 

* "Rise and Fall of the Confederacy," vol. II, chap. XXIII. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 147 

as he rode by on his way out to the army, seen a num- 
ber of horses at a house, among which he recognized 
General Lee's horse, and having joined the conference. 
"The tone of the conversation," he says, "was quite 
despondent, and one especially pointed out the inevi- 
table consequence of the enemy's advance by throwing 
out 'bayous and constructing successive parallels." 
This must have been the same general whose division, 
as Longstreet states, was broken up, and here we have 
the reason for it. 

Long supplements the account of this first meeting 
of Lee and his generals given by Longstreet. "The 
principal officers of the army were," he says, "present 
and were almost unanimous in the opinion that the line 
then occupied should be abandoned for one nearer 
Richmond, which was considered [by them] more de- 
fensible." 

Lee, as reported by Longstreet, said nothing at the 
time; but Long states that he made a personal recon- 
noissance of the whole position and then, against this 
almost unanimous judgment of his generals, "declared 
his intention of holding it," and "ordered it to be im- 
mediately fortified in the most effective manner." ^ 
How effective it was the 26th and 27th of June were 
to show. 

This meeting of Lee and his generals had something 
of the effect which Napoleon's first meeting with his 
generals in Italy had.. From that moment the army 
felt a new hand and soon acknowledged its master. 
His first act was one which should dispel the delusion 

'Long's "Robert E. Lee," pp. 163, 164. 



148 ROBERT E. LEE 

that he was great only in defensive operations. It 
was, indeed, the height of audacity and the forerun- 
ner in a career in which audacity was possibly the 
chief element. 

Massing his troops suddenly on the north side of the 
Chickahominy, and calling Stonewall Jackson from the 
valley to meet him at a given point at a given hour, he 
fell upon McClellan's entrenchments, crushed his right 
wing, and rolled him back to the upland plain of Mal- 
vern Hill. Was it on the defensive or the offensive that 
he acted when he conceived and carried through to su- 
preme success those masterly tactics ? Was he acting 
on the defensive or offensive when again, dashing upon 
him on the entrenched uplands of Malvern Hill, he swept 
him back to his gunboats and shattered at once his 
plans and his prestige? It was a battle fought as Grant 
fought at second Cold Harbor, mainly by frontal at- 
tack; and, like the plan of second Cold Harbor, has 
been criticised as costing needless waste of life. But, 
unlike Grant's futile and costly assaults, Malvern Hill, 
however bloody it was, proved successful. That night 
McClellan, his great army shattered and his prestige 
destroyed, retreated to the shelter of his gunboats. 
Lee's audacious tactics saved Richmond. It was not 
until nearly three years had passed, and until hundreds 
of thousands of lives had been spent, and the seed-corn 
of the Confederate South had been ground in the ever- 
grinding mills of war, that a Union picket ever again 
got a glimpse of the spires of Richmond, or any Union 
soldier, other than a prisoner of war, heard her church 
bells pealing in the quiet night. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 149 

It had long been plain to Lee's clear vision that 
the best defence of Virginia's capital was an offensive 
movement which should menace the Federal capital 
and compel the Washington government to hold for its 
defence the troops which otherwise would join McClel- 
lan, and as early as April 29 he had suggested to Stone- 
wall Jackson, then operating in the Valley of Virginia, 
a threatening countermove to prevent, if possible, Mc- 
Dowell from crossing the Rappahannock and joining 
McClellan. This Jackson had promptly proceeded to 
do and had executed his famous double. Crossing the 
Blue Ridge, as if leaving the Valley of Virginia, then 
doubling back, he had marched on Milroy, and, defeat- 
ing him at McDowell, had pursued him to Franklin, 
and had raised such a commotion in Washington that 
Banks, Fremont, and McDowell were all set on him by 
the panic-stricken authorities. Two weeks before the 
battle of Seven Pines Lee had again prompted Jackson 
to move on Banks and, if successful, drive him back 
toward the Potomac and create the impression that 
he intended to threaten that line, a movement in which 
Jackson was completely successful. Thus Lee had, 
with the aid of his able lieutenant, stopped the armies 
of Fremont and McDowell from any attempt to rein- 
force McClellan, and was ready when the moment came 
to carry out his far-reaching plan to defeat and pos- 
sibly destroy by one swift blow McClellan 's great army, 
now lying at the gates of Richmond and holding both 
sides of the Chickahominy. 

It is no part of the plan of this book to discuss in 
detail Lee's consummate tactics; but a clear outline 



150 ROBERT E. LEE 

of his far-seeing plan is necessary. ]\IcClellan's army, 
flushed with hope after the constant advance up the 
Peninsula, lay in a long shallow arc to the east and 
north of Richmond, extending from the vicinity of the 
James to the hills above Beaver Dam Creek — five fine 
army corps in all. Fitz John Porter's corps, his right 
wing, lay entrenched on these uplands on the north of 
the Chickahominy. Franklin's corps lay next to the 
Chickahominy on the south, Heintzelman on his left, 
resting on the broad morass of Wliite Oak Swamp, with 
Keyes's corps behind them in reserve; and all were 
strongly entrenched. 

Johnston had attacked on the south side of the 
Chickahominy and failed to dislodge McClellan. Wliat 
would Lee do? His first act, as stated, was to overrule 
his generals' almost unanimous opinion to withdraw to 
the inner defence of Richmond. He retired his army 
only to the original position held before the assault at 
Seven Pines, and fortified on the south bank of the 
Chickahominy, to secure that side of the river against 
any advance from that direction while he prepared for 
his coup on the north bank against McClellan's right 
wing, commanded by the gallant Fitz John Porter. 
The line, as thus selected, ran from Chaffin's Bluff on 
the north bank of the James across to a point on the 
Chickahominy above New Bridge (crossing the River 
Road about four miles, and the other roads about five 
miles, from Richmond), thence up the south bank of the 
Chickahominy to Meadow Bridge at the crossing of the 
Virginia Central Railroad. Along this line lay the six 
divisions in which Lee's army was organized: Long- 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 151 

street on the right, and next, in order, Huger, D. H. 
Hill, Magruder, Wliiting, and A. P. Hill, the latter 
guarding the left of the Confederate position above the 
Chickahominy. Each general was made responsible 
for his line, and was ordered to construct defences in 
his front, which, manned by the Army of Northern 
Virginia, should withstand any assault. 

At first there appears to have been much complain- 
ing of the labor which this entailed on the men, and 
one of the general officers — a man more noted for his 
courage than for his reticence — is said to have ha- 
rangued his men on the disgrace of having to shelter 
themselves behind sand-bags and earthworks instead 
of being shown the enemy and led against him. In a 
short time, however, Lee's constant presence along the 
lines, his serene confidence and soldierly bearing are 
said to have restored the good temper and morale of 
the troops, and before long they began to look for his 
daily visits as he rode by inspecting the work. Even 
General Tombs, who had held in some contempt picks 
and spades, prepared fortifications of logs along his 
front. 

Lee's military secretary notes, on the 3d of June, 
that the work ''was in rapid progress all along the line. 
The men appeared in better spirits than the day before, 
and seemed to be interested in their work." And so 
on for many days. On June 6 he notes that 'Hhe 
troops are in good spirits, and their confidence in Gen- 
eral Lee is rapidly increasing." 

On June 16, General Lee, accompanied by Colonel 
Long, made a reconnoissance of the Federal position 
on the north side of the Chickahominy. "There was 



152 ROBERT E. LEE 

then on that side of the Hne a Federal force of about 
25,000 men, commanded by General Fitz John Porter. 
The main body of this force occupied a position near 
Mr. Gaines's house, and one division, five or six thou- 
sand strong, was posted at Mechanicsville. During this 
reconnoissance," continues Long, ''General Lee turned 
to the writer and remarked: 'Now, Colonel Long, how 
can we get at those people?'" 
\y "Fitz John Porter's position " appeared to him "suf- 
ficiently exposed to invite attack, and, the force at 
Fredericksburg having been withdrawn, General Lee 
determined to assume the aggressive. This determina- 
tion, however, was communicated only to his military 
family until he had fully matured his plan of operation, 
which he then submitted to Mr. Davis in a personal 
interview." 

Thus, though he had as his first move withdrawn his 
army even nearer Richmond than before, he had no idea 
of remaining there idle while McClellan prepared to 
dislodge him. On the 8th of June he outlined to the 
Secretary of War his plan that Jackson should be "pre- 
pared to act with the army near Richmond if called 
on," and on the 11th, having decided to send Stuart to 
feel around McClellan's right wing, he wrote Jackson of 
his plans for McClellan's destruction, as follows: 

Head-quarters, near Richmond, June 11, 1862. 

Brigadier-General Thomas J. Jackson, Commanding 
the Valley District. 
General: Your recent successes have been the cause 
of the liveliest joy to this army, as well as to the coun- 
try. The admiration caused by your skill and bold- 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 153 

ness has been constantly mingled with solicitude for 
your situation. The practicability of re-inforcing you 
has been the subject of earnest consideration. It has 
been determined to do so at the expense of weakening 
this army. Brigadier-General Lawton, with six regi- 
ments from Georgia, is on the way to you, and Brigadier- 
General Whiting, with eight veteran regiments, leaves 
here to-day. The object is to enable you to crush the 
forces opposed to you, then leave your unavailable 
troops to watch the country and guard the passes cov- 
ered by your cavalry and artillery, and with your main 
body, including EwelPs Division and Lawton's and 
Whiting's command, move rapidly to Ashland by rail 
or otherwise, as you may find most advantageous, and 
sweep down between the Chickahominy and Pamunkey, 
cutting up the enemy's comrriunications, while this 
army attacks General McClellan in front. He will thus, 
I think, be forced to come out of his entrenchments, 
where he is strongly posted on the Chickahominy and 
apparently prepared to move by gradual approaches 
on Richmond. Keep me advised of your movements, 
and, if practicable, precede your troops, that we may 
confer and arrange for simultaneous attack. I am, 
with great respect, your obedient servant. 

R. E. Lee, General. 

It was deemed important to ascertain how McClel- 
lan's line of communication with his base of supplies 
on the York River was protected. To secure accurate 
information Lee despatched General Stuart with a small 
force (about 1,200 cavalry and a battery of horse 
artillery)^ to investigate around his right flank and 
make a reconnoissance in the direction of McClellan's 

» Walter H. Taylor's "General Lee," p. 58. 



154 ROBERT E. LEE 

line of communication, with his base at West Point. 
Stuart's brilliant performance of this task set a new 
mark for cavalry leaders the world over. Setting forth 
from Richmond on the 11th of June, he rode north, 
as if bound for the mountains, then, turning eastward, 
passed down through Hanover upon McClellan's right, 
driving before him a small body of cavalry which 
he found there and defeating an occupying force 
found at Old Church, some ten miles below Hanover 
Court House on the Virginia Central Railroad. In 
a small skirmish between the two places he lost the 
only man lost in the raid, the gallant Captain Latane, 
who was killed leading a charge against a troop of the 
enemy which attempted to bar the way. Passing on 
from Old Church he struck McClellan's line of com- 
munication, the York River Railroad, at Tunstall's 
Station, where he destroyed the railroad and took note 
of the indifferent measures adopted to guard the line. 
Then knowing that an overwhelming force had been 
sent out in his rear to cut off his retreat, he conceived 
the daring plan of pushing onward and making a dash 
around McClellan's entire army. 

Accordingly, turning southward, he headed straight 
for the Chickahominy, in McClellan's rear. Finding 
that the bridge on which he had expected to cross had 
been washed away, he tore down an old building near 
by and utilizing the remaining timbers of the old 
bridge, constructed a bridge, swam his horses, crossed 
in the rear of McClellan, and after a hazardous and 
record-breaking march, riding night and day, reached 
the James, swept up its north bank beyond McClellan's 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 155 

left, and reached Richmond with the information de- 
sired, having made a complete circuit of McClellan's 
army. 

This achievement had several inamediate conse- 
quences: It aroused a wide-spread distrust of McClel- 
lan; it possibly decided Lee to change his first plan to 
the one he finally adopted, of overwhelming McClellan's 
right and cutting him off from his base of supplies on 
the north; and it probably decided McClellan to estab- 
lish a new base on the James. In any event, a few 
days later McClellan began to send transports, with 
all needed anamunition and supplies, to Harrison's 
Landing, on the James, to provide for a contingency 
which he had for some time been considering — the 
possibility of needing some other base than West Point. 

McClellan, however^ while contemplating establish- 
ing a base of supplies on the James, which he controlled, 
in preparation for some quick move, appears to have 
continued satisfied with his former disposition of his 
forces, by which he occupied both sides of the Chicka- 
hominy within eight miles of Richmond, except that 
he transferred the Second and Sixth Corps to the south 
side of that stream, leaving only the Fifth Corps on the 
north side. Here he fortified the approaches to his 
position on the uplands behind Beaver Dam Creek. 
He yet more heavily fortified the position on the south 
side of the Chickahominy, extending his powerful 
field works from a point known as Golding's Farm to 
White Oak Swamp, a boggy and thickly timbered 
bottom extending for several miles at an angle to the 
Chickahominy. He appears to have been obsessed 



156 ROBERT E. LEE 

with the conviction that the enemy in front of him 
largely outnumbered him, and he constantly and ur- 
gently applied for reinforcements. 

On the southern side, as we have seen, Jackson was 
instructed to strike a blow in the Shenandoah Valley 
which should startle Washington, and, while they were 
still dazed, to hasten and join Lee on the Chicka- 
hominy, and with his veterans act as Lee's left wing 
in a blow on McClellan's right which should drive him 
from before Richmond. To make sure of this, as well 
as to lull McClellan to a sense of security, several bri- 
gades were sent to Jackson; but time appeared so im- 
portant to Lee that Jackson was summoned to leave 
his cavalry and a small force to watch the enemy and 
join him without waiting for a stroke in the valley. 
The day after Stuart returned from his raid, Jackson 
was told that the sooner he could come the better. 
Putting his troops in motion, the general rode ahead to 
Richmond to learn the details of Lee's plans, and then 
rode back to hurry forward his troops, already push- 
ing on by forced marches toward the field where, by 
Lee's brilliant plan, the assault was to be delivered at 
dawn on the 26th by his combined forces.^ This he 
felt sure would force McClellan out of his entrench- 
ments, where he was strongly posted and apparently 
prepared to move by gradual approaches on Richmond. 

It has been stated that his despatching of troops 
to the valley was done ostentatiously to deceive the 
enemy; but Lee's letter of the same date to the Secre- 
tary of War disposes of this idea. In it he states that 

» Walter H. Taylor's "General Lee," p. 60. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 157 

it is very desirable and important that the acquisition 
of troops to the command of General T. J. Jackson 
should be kept secret, and with this in view he requests 
the secretary to use his influence with the Richmond 
newspapers to prevent any mention of the same in the 
public prints. 

Moreover, when he decided that he would not wait 
longer for Jackson, and three days later ordered him to 
join him at once, he again impressed on him that, 'Ho 
be efficacious, the movement must be secret." The 
effect, however, had been already gained, for on the 
18th McClellan telegraphed the government at Wash- 
ington that some 10,000 men had been sent to Jackson 
the same day that Jackson, doubling on his track with 
three divisions, "containing ten brigades, with eight 
batteries," perhaps 25,000 men in all, headed for the 
Chickahominy. 

Jackson had already in the intervening time fought, 
on June 8 and 9, respectively, the victorious battles of 
Cross Keys and Port Republic, defeating Fremont and 
Shields, and struck new awe in the breast of the govern- 
ment at Washington. And so rapid and secret were 
his movements that while Mr. Lincoln and McClellan 
were exchanging telegrams relative to Jackson's re- 
inforcements from Lee, he was already half way to 
Richmond. And when, on the 25th of June, Secretary 
Stanton, in reply to a despatch from McClellan, asking 
for the latest information about Jackson, telegraphed 
that he had heard that Jackson was at Gordonsville 
with 10,000 rebels, but that neither McDowell nor 
Banks nor Fremont had any knowledge of his move- 



158 ROBERT E. LEE 

merits, Jackson was bivouacked at Ashland, but a few 
hours from the field of Gaines's Mill. 

Lee's first plan appears to have been to bring Jack- 
son down- from the valley and fling him upon McClel- 
lan's right, and at the same time with such turning 
movement attack McClellan in front, somewhat as 
had been done at Seven Pines. But this plan was sub- 
sequently abandoned for one by which Jackson was, 
as we have seen, still to attack McClellan's right, as 
previously proposed, and Lee was to cross to the north 
of the Chickahominy and unite with him in first de- 
stroying McClellan's right wing and then in falling 
upon his main body in the retreat down the Peninsula, 
which he felt sure he would compel.^ Longstreet as- 
serts that he suggested this movement to Lee; but 
the fact is questioned by most authorities and denied 
by some, and the claim, in face of Lee's silence and of 
other incontrovertible facts, appears untenable. The 
chief danger, and a grave one, in this plan was that 
McClellan, if he learned of the intended removal from 
his front of Lee's main body, might suddenly assume 
the offensive and, carrying the depleted works in his 
front by a sudden assault, seize Richmond. 

The matter resolved itself, finally, into a decision 
based on the character of the two generals. Lee's 
plan was the height of audacity; but he decided upon it 
and carried it through with unwavering resolution to a 
brilliant conclusion. McClellan did, indeed, on learn- 
ing through his secret-service agents and an occasional 
deserter that Jackson was on his way to join in an at- 

• Ropes, II, p. 1G5. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 159 

tack on him, take steps to assume the offensive. He 
directed General Porter to make provision to guard his 
right flank (June 23), and spoke of 'Hhe decisive move- 
ment" to be made to "determine the fate of Rich- 
mond." ^ He sent General Casey to the Wliite House 
to protect his base of supplies and his line of communi- 
cation therewith. He ordered Heintzelman to ad- 
vance his pickets on the Williamsburg Road, in the 
direction of Richmond, and so satisfied was he with 
his progress that he telegraphed to Washington to an- 
nounce the success of the movement. 

At this time, however, Jackson, almost at the end of 
his long march, was drawing near Ashland, and Lee was 
writing his battle order, which was to roll up McClellan's 
right wing beyond the Chickahominy and send it across 
the stream by night, shattered and disheartened. In 
this movement of McClellan's a severe fight took place 
between Hooker, on the one side, supported by Kearney 
on the left and Richardson, of Sumner's corps, on the 
right, and Armistead and Wright, of Huger's Division, on 
the Southern side, reinforced later by Mahone and Ran- 
som. The fight lasted until night, and the losses on 
either side were between four and five hundred men. 
That night the Federals fell back to their old positions. 
With this affair, says Allan, "McClellan's opportunity 
of delivering battle on his own terms passed away." ^ 

Lee, who up to this time had held his forces in hand 
on the south side of the Chickahominy, now, as the 
Federals retired, moved Longstreet and D. H. Hill over 

» Allan, p. 136. Ropes, II, p. 169. 

* Allan's "Army of Northern Virginia," pp. 74, 75. 



160 ROBERT E. LEE 

toward the Chickahominy to be ready to cross near 
Mechanicsville and join in the attack on Porter next 
day. His plan was to leave 30,000 men to hold Mc- 
Clellan's main body of 70,000 men and with 50,000 fall 
on his right wing, numbering only some 35,000 men. 

Lee's specific battle order was issued on the 24th, 
and is given in full (in Appendix A) for the benefit of 
those who wish to study his first battle order. 

Had these orders been carried out exactly, there is 
no doubt that Porter would have been flanked and 
forced out of his position without the frightful cost of 
A. P. Hill's deadly assaults on the heights above 
Beaver Dam and Po white Creeks. With Jackson up, 
Lee's army numbered about 80,000 men.^ His plan 
briefly was for Jackson, with his veterans, to advance 
before daylight on June 26, with Stuart on his left, 
and turn the long right wing of McClellan's army, under 
Porter, posted at Mechanicsville in a strong position, 
commanding the turnpike and bridge across the Chick- 
ahominy, with Beaver Dam Creek and its upland be- 
hind it; for Branch's Brigade, facing Porter, to keep 
in touch with Jackson, and on his advance to cross the 
Chickahominy and rejoin his commander. A, P. Hill; 
for A. P. Hill, as soon as he knew Jackson was engaged, 
to cross the Chickahominy at the Meadow Bridge and un- 
cover the crossing of the Chickahominy at the Mechan- 
icsville Bridge; for Longstreet to cross to the support 
of A. P. Hill and for D. H. Hill to cross to the support 
of Jackson; and the front divisions moving together, 
with Jackson in advance, would sweep down the Chick- 

' Ibid., p. 69. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 161 

ahominy, drive Porter from his position above New 
Bridge, and pressing forward together toward the York 
River Railroad, close upon McClellan's rear and force 
him down the Chickahominy. Meanwhile Magruder 
and Huger were to hold the defences on the south side 
of the Chickahominy and keep McClellan's main army 
well occupied. 

Lee's plan was the consummation of audacity, for it 
would leave only 30,000 men to confront and hold Mc- 
Clellan's left wing and centre on the south of the Chick- 
ahominy, while he assaulted his right wing on the north 
bank with his main army. Happily for Lee, McClellan 
was obsessed with the idea that the force opposite to 
him numbered at least 200,000 men. This idea had 
held him back hitherto. This idea held him back now. 
He neither reinforced Porter on the north bank of the 
river until the 27th, nor attacked Lee's front though it 
had been denuded to barely 30,000 men. The time 
fixed for the assault was based on Jackson's convic- 
tion that he could be up and ready to attack at day- 
light on the 26th of June. But for once in his life 
Jackson was not "up." He was to have been at the 
Slash Church, near Ashland, on the 25th, and was to 
bivouac near the Central Railway (now the Chesapeake 
and Ohio), ready to march at three o'clock on the 
morning of the 26th on the road to Pole Green Church 
to deliver the assault which was to be the signal to 
A. P. Hill to cross the Chickahominy. But it was not 
until four o'clock that afternoon that he was able to 
reach the neighborhood of the field of battle, where the 
fight had been raging for several hours, and even then 



162 ROBERT E. LEE 

he did not attack, but halted and lay with the roar of the 
guns to his right distinctly audible. 

A. P. Hill having waited all day for news of Jackson, 
finally, fearful that the whole plan might miscarry, 
moved at three o'clock, crossed the Chickahominy at 
Meadow Bridge, and carried the stoutly defended posi- 
tion of Mechanicsville, several miles below. Here he 
found himself in front of Porter, posted " in a formida- 
ble position " above Beaver Dam Creek, with his entire 
line covered by strong entrenchments, the approach to 
which was over an open plain exposed to a withering 
fire of cannon and musketry. Here lay McCall's power- 
ful division of 9,500 men and beyond them in support- 
ing distance were two brigades of Morell's division 
where they could guard the Federal right or support the 
centre. Without waiting for further news of Jackson, 
Hill, who was an ardent fighter, pushing forward, as- 
saulted furiously, but in vain, the strongly defended 
position beyond Beaver Dam Creek. The utmost hero- 
ism was shown on both sides, as the frightful death-roll 
showed. Wlien night fell the Confederate losses in 
killed and wounded are said to have been nearly 1,500 
men,^ while the Union losses were only 361, and, accord- 
ing to Ropes's view, Hill, who had ^'attacked fiercely 
and recklessly, was repulsed with great slaughter with- 
out having made the smallest impression on the Federal 
lines." ^ 

Jackson, who had moved from Ashland at three 
o'clock in the morning, reached Hundley's Corners, 

' Livermore's "Numbers and Losses," p. 82. 
* Ropes, II, p. 172. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 163 

some three miles from the battle-field, about four in 
the afternoon, and, though the battle was thundering 
not far away, he went into bivouac, an act which has 
given rise to endless wonder and discussion. 

It has always been a question among military stu- 
dents as to on whom rested the responsibility for the 
costly attack of the 26th of June on the formidable 
position above Beaver Dam Creek. Ropes places it on 
A. P. Hill, to whom he refers as "a daring and energetic 
but inconsiderate officer." Henderson declares that 
"the order of June 24, instructing Jackson to start 
from Slash Church at 3 a. m. on the 26th, and thus lead- 
ing the other generals to believe that he would certainly 
be there, should never have been issued," and thus lays 
the responsibility on Lee. Allan states that Lee's orig- 
inal plan, by which Jackson was to turn McClellan's 
right wing, failed through Jackson's not being up. 
"The Confederate leader felt that his plan of operation 
must now be apparent to General McClellan," and that 
"with two-thirds of his army north of the Chickahominy, 
and but one-third holding the lines in front of the city 
against McClellan's main body, no time must be al- 
lowed his adversary to make new dispositions or to set 
forward a counter movement against Richmond. He, 
therefore, ordered A. P. Hill to make a direct attack on 
the Federal positions." * This inferentially seems to 
place the responsibility on Jackson. And to the same 
effect are the declarations of General Long and Colonel 
Taylor, both of whom were on Lee's staff and both of 
whom give the fear of McClellan's making a counter 

* Allan's "Army of Northern Virginia," p. 80. 



164 ROBERT E. LEE 

attack on Richmond as the reason for not delaying the 
attack till Jackson had come up on the flank. That 
night and next morning, however, McClellan, under 
protection of his artillery, retired his right wing to his 
second line above Powhite Creek, in a crescent front- 
ing Gaines's Mill and Cold Harbor and covering his 
bridges. Lee, eager to secure the fruits of his strategy 
and crush McClellan's right wing, and apprehensive 
lest McClellan might, on finding his main army beyond 
the Chickahominy, overwhelm Magruder and Huger 
and march on Richmond, assumed personal direction 
of the field next day. As soon as it was discovered 
that Porter was withdrawing his troops from his posi- 
tion above Beaver Dam Creek, Lee ordered A. P. Hill 
to push forward in pursuit, and D. H. Hill to join Jack- 
son to the left in an attack around Porter's right flank. 
Magruder and Huger, on the south side of the Chick- 
ahominy, were ordered to demonstrate against the 
forces in their front "to prevent, as far as possible, all 
movement on that side," and fully complied with their 
instructions. It was about noon when A. P. Hill came 
up with the rear guard of Porter's troops in front of the 
new Federal position above Powhite Creek.^ This 
position, like his first, a high plateau above a stream 
which winds through a deep "bottom," was natu- 
rally a strong one, and was rendered almost unassail- 
able by the conformation of the ground, protected 
by almost impassable swamps and by the abatis of 
felled trees beyond an open plain a quarter of a mile 

' The account of these movements is taken partly from Henderson 
and partly from Allan's "Army of Northern Virginia." 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 165 

wide, swept by a triple line of fire and commanded by 
heavy batteries on both sides of the Chickahominy. 
It was a desperate undertaking to drive such a force 
from such a position, but the need was great — Rich- 
mond hung in the balance. Lee promptly attacked 
again, Hill still leading the assault, and after terrific 
fighting, carried the breastworks, and forced Porter 
back to the river, across which he withdrew his shat- 
tered corps that night. 

This battle is said by Allan to have been, perhaps, the 
most obstinately contested battle of the war, and as 
Lee's first great battle its details may be given. On 
finding that Porter had made a stand above Gaines's 
Mill, Hill's front brigade (Gregg's) was at once de- 
ployed and sent forward. The Federal skirmishers 
were driven in, and Gregg, descending into the deep 
valley, crossed the stream and formed in line on the 
east side preparatory to attacking the Federal lines on' 
the face and crest of the ridge. ^ His other brigades, 
in order — Branch, J. R. Anderson, Field, and Archer — 
were rapidly moved up and formed in line with Gregg, 
with Pender in reserve. Here Hill waited, by Lee's 
orders, till he learned that Longstreet was coming up, 
lower down the creek, on his right, and then, the 
approach of Jackson and D. H. Hill being momentarily 
expected, Lee, who had assumed personal command 
of the field, gave the order; and about half-past two 
A. P. Hill let loose his lines, and they dashed forward 
against the Federal left and centre. 

'Allan's "Army of Northern Virginia," p. 36. Official Records, 
series I, vol. XI, part II, p. 836. 



166 ROBERT E. LEE 

The assault was one of the most intrepid made during 
the war, and it was met with equal intrepidity. Says 
A. P. Hill: ''The incessant roar of musketry and the 
deep thunder of the artillery told that the whole force 
of the enemy was in my front. Branch becoming hard 
pressed, Pender was sent to his relief. Field and 
Archer were also doing their part as directed. . . . 
These two brigades, under their heroic leaders, moving 
across the open field, met the enemy behind an abatis 
and strong entrenchments at the base of a long, wooded 
hill, the enemy being in three lines on the side of this 
declivity, its crest falling off into a plateau, and this 
plateau studded with guns. . . . Desperate but un- 
availing attempts were made to force the enemy 's posi- 
tion. The 14th South Carolina, Colonel McGowen, on 
the extreme left, made several daring charges. The 
16th North Carolina, Colonel McElroy, and 22d, Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Gray, at one time carried the crest of 
the hill, and were in the enemy's camp, but were driven 
back by overwhelming numbers. The 35th Georgia, 
Colonel Thomas, also drove through the enemy's lines 
like a wedge, but it was of no avail. Gregg and Branch 
fought with varying success, Gregg having before him 
the vaunted Zouaves and Sykes's regulars. Pender's 
Brigade was suffering heavily, but stubbornly held its 
own. Field and Archer met a withering storm of bul- 
lets, but pressed on to within a short distance of the 
enemy's works, but the storm was too fierce for such a 
handful of men. They recoiled and were again pressed 
to the charge, but with no better success. These brave 
men had done all that any brave soldiers could do. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 167 

Directing the men to lie down, the fight was continued 
and help awaited. From having been the attacking, 
I now became the attacked, but stubbornly, gallantly 
was the ground held. My division was thus engaged 
full two hours before assistance was received." ^ 

Meanwhile Jackson, moving toward Cold Harbor, on 
finding the roads in his front obstructed and defended 
by sharp-shooters, had ''gone back into the Bethesda 
Church Road. This threw him in the rear of D. H. 
Hill, and it was past midday when these commanders 
reached the vicinity of Cold Harbor." Here Jackson 
halted for something over an hour, while the sound 
of the battle rolled up from the direction of the 
Chickahominy. He says in his report that ''soon after. 
General A. P. Hill became engaged, and being un- 
acquainted with the ground and apprehensive, from 
what appeared to me to be the respective positions of 
the Confederate and Federal forces engaged, that if I 
then pressed forward, our troops would be mistaken 
for the enemy and fired into, and hoping that Gen- 
erals A. P. Hill and Longstreet would soon drive the 
Federals toward me, I directed General D. H. Hill to 
move his division to the left of the road, so as to leave 
between him and the woods on the right of the road 
an open space, across which I hoped the enemy would 
be driven." ^ 

This halt of Jackson's came near losing the day, 
and had McClellan sent Porter the reinforcements he 



*A. p. Hill's report. Allan's "Army of Northern Virginia," p. 87; 
War Records, series I, vol. XI, part II, p. 836. 
^ Ibid., series I, vol. XI, part II, p. 553. 



168 ROBERT E. LEE 

urgently asked for, the error might not have been re- 
trieved. ''As on the previous da}^," says Henderson, 
"the Confederate attack had failed in combination. 
A. P. Hill had fought for two hours without assistance. 
Longstreet had then come in with Whiting. Jackson 
and D. H. Hill were still away. ... A battery of 
D. H. Hill's Division was brought into action, but was 
soon silenced, and beyond this insignificant demonstra- 
tion the Army of the Valley made no endeavor to join 
the battle. The brigades were halted by the roadside. 
Away to the right, above the intervening forest, rolled 
the roar of battle, the crash of shells and the din of mus- 
ketry, but no orders were given for the advance.'' ^ 

At length Jackson awoke to the imperative demand 
of the situation. According to Long, Lee sent several 
staff officers to him to bring him to the support of Hill 
and Longstreet. Others give him the credit of order- 
ing his command forward when, judging from the 
sound and direction of the firing that the original plan 
had failed, he advanced to the attack. D. H. Hill, east 
of the Old Cold Harbor Road, was sent forward against 
the enemy's left flank. Ewell was on his right, with 
Lawton, Wliiting, Winder, in order, still further to the 
right. The position which they attacked, like that in 
front of A. P. Hill and Longstreet, might well have 
appeared impregnable. Whiting, with Law's and 
Hood's Brigades, moving to the right, were met by 
General Lee and directed to support General A. P. 
Hill, and when Jackson's lines advanced they found 
themselves confronted by the same conditions which 

'Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson," II, p. 29. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 169 

had broken and dashed to pieces the charging lines of 
A. P. Hill and Longstreet. Again and again they had 
moved forward, only to be smashed to pieces and form 
and dash forward again. It was then, adds Hender- 
son, that Jackson recognized that the ''sustained fire 
was a sure token that the enemy still held his own; 
and for the first time and the last his staff beheld 
their leader riding restlessly to and fro, and heard his 
orders given in a tone which betrayed the storm 
within." ^ 

Finally he sent to his lieutenants an order. "Tell 
them," he said, "this affair must hang in suspense no 
longer. Let them sweep the field with the bayonet." 

So obstinately did Porter cling to his position, and 
so complete was the repulse of Hill, that Lee thought 
that they must outnumber him, and felt that the 
enemy was gradually gaining ground. He, therefore, 
"sent orders to Longstreet, who was near at hand, to 
make a diversion against the Federal left near the 
river." ^ According to Longstreet, he sent an urgent 
message to that general, who was in reserve on the 
extreme right, that "all other efforts had failed, and 
that unless he could do something the day was lost." 

This diversion was made by three brigades under 
Wilcox, and Pickett's Brigade, which developed the 
strong position and force of the enemy in his front. 
"Whereupon," Longstreet says, "from the urgent nature 
of the message from the commanding general and my 

^Ibid., vol. Ill, p. 34. 

''War Records, series I, vol. II, part II, p. 737. Allan's "Army of 
Northern Virginia," p. 88. 



170 ROBERT E. LEE 

own peculiar position, I determined to change the feint 
into an attack, and orders for a general attack were 
issued." ^ He adds that "at this moment General 
Whiting arrived with his division and put it into 
position at once and joined in the assault." 

At this time, however, Porter's reserves had already 
been exhausted. He had despatched to McClellan in 
the morning that he hoped to do without aid; but 
that his retreat was a delicate movement, and he re- 
quested that Franklin, or some other command, be held 
ready to reinforce him. Slocum's division reached the 
field at four o'clock and enabled Porter to hold out 
for some two hours more. An urgent appeal was 
sent to McClellan by Porter for further reinforcements; 
but, to quote Allan, ''so efficiently had Lee's orders to 
Magruder and Huger, to hold the enemy in their front 
by demonstrations and a display of force on the Rich- 
mond side, been carried out, that none of the Federal 
commanders thought it safe to spare any more troops 
to aid Porter." McClellan, undoubtedly, toward the 
end of the day, made efforts to relieve Porter. At 
half-past five, having heard from Franklin that he did 
not think it prudent to take any more troops from his 
front at that time, he sent him word that Porter was 
hard pressed, and that it was "not a question of pru- 
dence but of possibilities"; that he had ordered eight 
regiments of Sumner's to support Porter, and, if possi- 
ble, Franklin was also to send a brigade.^ 

About dusk the brigades of French and Meagher were 

* Ibid. Ropes, II. 

"War Records, series I, vol. XI, part I, p. 59. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 171 

sent across, and arrived just in time to save the defeat 
of Porter from becoming a rout. 

Henderson, who is certainly high authority, and who 
has at times something of a brief for Jackson, has under- 
taken to relieve Jackson for his extraordinary and in- 
explicable failure to bear the part expected of him in 
the battle, and says that "Lee had anticipated that 
Jackson's approach would cause the enemy to prolong 
their front in order to cover their line of retreat to the 
Wliite House, and so weaken that part of the position 
which was to be attacked by Longstreet"; and that 
"Jackson had been ordered to draw up his troops so 
as to meet such a contingency." He admits that no 
record of such an order is to be found, and that Jackson 
never mentioned, either at the time or afterward, 
what its purport was, and when he states that his sur- 
viving staff officers are unanimous in declaring that 
he must have received direct instructions from Gen- 
eral Lee, he shows that they are only reasoning on 
probabilities and not stating a fact known to them. 

In his later account of thg battle, contained in his 
history of the war, Longstreet states that "just as the 
brigades advanced. General Whiting pressed through 
the woods with his own and Hood's Brigades and re- 
ported that he had lost sight of his commander. Gen- 
eral Jackson, in the forest, and asked him to put him 
into the battle, which was done." From Longstreet's 
account it might appear that he, himself, had ordered 
the general advance which carried the day; but a 
greater general than Longstreet ordered this advance — 
the same who had met Wliiting and sent him to his 



172 ROBERT E. LEE 

aid/ In this advance Hood's Texans led the way, 
followed by Whiting's other brigade, who had orders 
to charge without firing a shot. ''The Federal lines 
were broken near their centre. The Confederates bore 
in, turning the right of the troops which constituted 
Porter's left, and also making it imperative for those 
on the right of his line to abandon their position." 
Before nightfall the field was swept, and as the sun 
sank, the standards of the Army of Northern Virginia 
were planted on the breastworks from one end to the 
other where Porter's intrepid soldiery had clung till the 
rammers could not be driven into their guns. 

''As the Federals retreated," continues Henderson, 
"knots of brave men, hastily collected by officers of all 
ranks, still qffered a fierce resistance, and, supported 
by the batteries, inflicted terrible losses on the crowded 
masses which swarmed up from the ravine; but the 
majority of the infantry, without ammunition and with 
few officers, streamed in disorder to the rear. For a 
time the Federal gunners stood manfully to their work. 
Porter's reserve artillery,. drawn up midway across the 
upland, offered a rallying point to the retreating in- 
fantry. Three small squadrons of the Fifth United 
States Cavalry made a gallant but useless charge, in 
which, out of seven oflicers, six fell; and on the ex- 
treme right the division of regulars, supported by a 
brigade of volunteers, fell back fighting to a second 
line. As at Bull Run, the disciplined soldiers alone 
showed a solid front amid the throng of fugitives. . . . 
But their stubborn valor availed nothing against the 

» Long's "Robert E. Lee," p. 173. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 173 

superior numbers which Lee's fine strategy had con- 
centrated on the field of battle." 

The Confederates pushed forward across the hard- 
won field, gathering up prisoners and capturing twenty- 
two gunS; besides many stands of colors, and it is 
believed by close students of the situation that had 
they kept on they might have captured many more, and 
possibly have destroyed McClellan's entire right wing. 
From this additional disaster McClellan was saved by 
the obscurity of the night and the opportune arrival 
of Meagher and French with 5,000 fresh troops. ^'Be- 
tween the bridges and the battle-field, on the slopes fall- 
ing to the Chickahominy, the dark forest covered the 
retreat of the routed army. Night had already fallen. 
The confusion in the ranks of the Confederates was 
extreme, and it was impossible to distinguish friend 
from foe. All direction had been lost. None knew the 
bearings of the bridges, or whether the Federals were 
retreating east or south. Regiments had already been 
exposed to the fire of their comrades." At this crucial 
moment, cheers rolling up from the valley through the 
dusk told that reinforcements had arrived, and the 
spent Confederates were halted on the field. ''Pushing 
through the mass of fugitives with the bayonet, these 
fine troops . . . formed line on the southern crest of 
the plateau. Joining the regulars, who still presented 
a stubborn front, they opened a heavy fire, and under 
cover of their steadfast lines, Porter's troops withdrew 
across the river." 

Thus Lee defeated McClellan in the furious battle of 
Gaines's Mill and Cold Harbor, seizing his position after 



174 ROBERT E. LEE 

desperate fighting, capturing his hne of communica- 
tion to West Point; and, driving him across the Cliick- 
ahominy, forced him to abandon his threatening posi- 
tion on its south side and fall back across Wliite Oak 
Swamp to Malvern Hill, some miles to the rear. It was 
a brilliant stroke for Lee to have crushed McClellan's 
right wing, while he held the rest of his army with 
only 25,000 men. And had Jackson attacked on the 
morning of the 26th, as planned, or possibly even on 
the morning of the 27th, the victory might have been 
yet more decisive.^ But it was necessary to do more to 
drive McClellan back from before Richmond. 

Jackson's error in underestimating the time required 
to join Lee in his first assault on McClellan was a costly 
one, and Lee's casualty list was appalling.^ A con- 
siderable part of this might have been spared had Jack- 
son been able to turn McClellan's wing on the morning 
of the 26th before Hill crossed the creek in front to at- 
tempt the desperate assault on his centre. 

On the 28th Lee held his army in hand, watchful to 
see which way McClellan, after his staggering blow, 
would move, whether by the way he had come, down 
the Peninsula, or toward the James. Ewell and Stuart 
were sent forward down the river to strike McClellan's 

> Taylor's "General Lee," pp. 68-78. 

* Colonel Thomas L. Livermore figures the Union losses at Gaines's 
Mill at 894 killed, 3,107 wounded, and 2,836 missing— total, 6,834; the 
Confederate losses, killed and wounded, at 8,751. The losses in all 
the Seven Days' Battles, from the 25th of June to July 1, he states 
as follows: Union — Killed, 1,734; wounded, 8,062; missing, 6,053; 
total, 15,849. Confederate— Killed, 3,478; wounded, 16,261; missing, 
875; total, 20,614. (" Numbers and Losses," p. 86.) Allan reckons the 
Confederate losses at 19,700; the Union losses at 15,765. ("Army of 
Northern Virginia," p. 141.) 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 175 

line of communication and probable line of retreat 
along the York River Railroad. The railroad was 
reached at Dispatch Station — which was destroyed to- 
gether with the stores collected there — and, the railroad 
bridge across the Chickahominy having been burnt by 
the guard on its retreat, Ewell halted there while 
Stuart rode on to West Point, where the enemy's vast 
stores that McClellan had left were being destroyed. 
Driving off Stoneman, he captured what was left. 
Meantime McClellan, having on the night of the 27th 
held a council of war with his generals, had destroyed 
his upper bridges across the Chickahominy and the 
immense quantity of stores brought with his army, and 
now, in full retreat on James River, was endeavoring 
to get his army across White Oak Swamp at his rear. 
This difficult and hazardous movement was ably and 
successfully conducted, owing largely to the "vast and 
impenetrable forest and jungle, under cover of which it 
was being executed," and to the failure of the com- 
manders in his front to ascertain his movements. 

Inasmuch as Lee has been criticised for not discover- 
ing earlier McClellan's intentions, his own views of the 
matter are interesting. Speaking of the 28th, he says : 
''During the forenoon, columns of dust south of the 
Chickahominy showed that the Federal army was in 
motion. The abandonment of the railroad and the de- 
struction of the bridge proved that no further attempt 
would be made to hold that line. But from the posi- 
tion it occupied, the roads, which led toward James 
River, would also enable it to reach the lower bridges 
over the Chickahominy and retreat down the Penin- 
sula. In the latter event it was necessary that our 



176 ROBERT E. LEE 

troops should continue on the north bank of the river, 
and until the intention of General McClellan was dis- 
covered it was deemed injudicious to change their dis- 
position. Ewell was, therefore, ordered to proceed to 
Bottom's Bridge, to guard that point, and the cavalry 
to watch the bridges below. No certain indications of 
a retreat to the James River were discovered by our 
forces on the south side of the Chickahominy, and late 
in the afternoon the enemy's works were reported to be 
fully manned. The strength of these fortifications pre- 
vented Generals Huger and Magruder from discovering 
what was passing in their front. Below the enemy's 
works the country was densely wooded and intersected 
by impassable swamps, at once concealing his move- 
ments and precluding reconnoissances except by the 
regular roads, all of which were strongly guarded. The 
bridges over the Chickahominy, in rear of the enemy, 
were destroyed, and their reconstruction impracticable 
in the presence of his whole army and powerful bat- 
teries. We were, therefore, compelled to wait until his 
purpose should be developed. Generals Huger and 
Magruder were again directed to use the utmost vigi- 
lance and pursue the enemy vigorously should they dis- 
cover that he was retreating. During the afternoon 
and night of the 28th the signs of a general movement 
were apparent, and no indications of his approach to 
the lower bridges of the Chickahominy having been dis- 
covered by the pickets in observation at those points, 
it became manifest that General McClellan was retreat- 
ing to the James River." ^ 
As soon as it became apparent what he would do, Lee 

'Liee's report, W. R., series I, vol. XI, part I, p. 493. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 177 

ordered his troops to the south side of the Chickahominy 
and proceeded to attack again at Savage Station on the 
29th. It was the afternoon, however, before Lee was 
sufficiently informed as to McClellan's disposition of his 
forces to attack him again, and when Magruder as- 
saulted his lines near Savage Station, McClellan had 
been in full retreat long enough to get most of his army 
across Wliite Oak Swamp, and it was only his strong 
rear guard that Magruder struck, the main army be- 
ing on the other side of the impenetrable jungle and 
morass. 

Longstreet crossed at New Bridge in the morning 
with his own and A. P. Hill's commands and advanced 
to the Darbytown Road. Holmes was brought over 
from Drewry's Bluff to the north side of the James. 
Magruder was sent forward toward Savage Station, and 
Jackson was directed to cross at Grapevine Bridge and 
support the movement. Jackson, however, was de- 
layed all day in rebuilding the bridge. Magruder was 
slow, and on coming up with Sumner at Savage Sta- 
tion, failed to use all his troops, and though McLaws, in 
the lead, made a gallant fight against superior numbers 
till dark, it was not supported, and McClellan was en- 
abled that night to get across White Oak Swamp and 
destroy the bridges behind him. 

"Lee's design was to close in as rapidly as possible 
on the rear and flank of the retreating enemy, and by 
throwing his whole force on McClellan's army, already 
staggering as it was by Porter's defeat, and still more 
demoralized by a hurried retreat and an immense de- 
struction of stores, to deal it a decisive blow. For 



178 ROBERT E. LEE 

this purpose all his lieutenants were ordered to press 
the enemy on the morrow." 

Magruder was ordered to pass southward around by 
the Darbytown Road, and then was sent forward to 
unite with Holmes and attack the enemy before he 
could secure his position at Malvern Hill. He arrived, 
however, too late to aid Holmes, who had attacked, but 
found himself under the fire of all their guns, both on 
land and water, and was forced to retire. Jackson, 
having crossed the Chickahominy during the night and 
pushed on to Wliite Oak Swamp, found himself stopped 
by the destruction of the bridge and unable to rebuild 
it in face of the furious fire which was kept up by the 
enemy (Franklin's corps) on the other side. 

In the expectation that Jackson would force his cross- 
ing at White Oak Swamp and be on McClellan's rear 
in time to co-operate with Longstreet, the latter ad- 
vanced down the Long Bridge Road and encountered 
the main force of McClellan's army posted at Frazier's 
Farm, or Glendale, at the Charles City Cross Roads. 
Here Longstreet 's Division was deployed across the 
Long Bridge Road, with a division of A. P. Hill in re- 
serve, except Branch's Brigade, which was posted to 
the right and rear to guard against Hooker's division, 
posted behind the Quaker Road to the right. Huger's 
column was expected to advance on the Charles City 
Road and attack on the right. Longstreet, supposing 
that the firing on his right came from Huger's attack, 
began the battle. His order was, he states, '^for Colo- 
nel Jenkins to silence a battery which was annoying 
them, and this was taken as an order to advance." It 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 179 

developed instantly that the enemy was present in 
great force, and from this time until night the divisions 
of Longstreet and A. P. Hill maintained ''one of the 
bloodiest struggles that took place during the Civil 
War." On both sides along the Darby town Road 
charges and countercharges were made with the great- 
est gallantry; but when night fell, McCall's fine divis- 
ion, who had borne the brunt of the fight, had been 
crushed, its gallant commander captured, and fourteen 
guns as well. The Federal lines, though bravely de- 
fended by numbers largely superior to the attacking 
force, had been carried with the exception of a single 
position. But though a staggering blow had been dealt 
to the Federal army, ''night found it still holding the 
Quaker Road and its line of retreat consequently un- 
obstructed." Critics appear to be agreed that this bat- 
tle of Glendale, or Frazier's Farm, was "the crisis of 
the Seven Days' Battles," and that had Lee been able to 
concentrate his whole strength against the Federals, it 
is probable that McClellan would never have reached 
the James, ^ "This day," adds Allan, "marked the 
crisis in the Seven Days' Battles, for it was on this 
30th of June that Lee more nearly grasped the full 
fruits of . his strategy, and McClellan more nearly es- 
caped complete overthrow, than on any other." 

Once more Lee's admirable plans had failed because 
of the failure of his lieutenants to co-operate at the 
crucial moment. "The Confederate commander had 
arranged with admirable strategy to throw his whole 
army upon the flank and rear of his retreating foe. 

'Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson," II, p. 48. 



180 ROBERT E. LEE 

While Holmes, on his right, was to try to seize Malvern 
Hill, and Jackson, on his left, was to press the rear of the 
retreating army, three columns under Huger, Long- 
street, and Magruder were to strike at his centre. . . . 
They were all in position by midday, and by the middle 
of the afternoon 50,000 men or more should have been 
attacking the Union lines. But, as we have seen, only 
the column under Longstreet and A. P. Hill did any- 
thing — the others accomplished nothing. They did 
not even prevent reinforcements from getting to the 
Federal centre. It is impossible to deny that General 
Lee was very poorly served on this occasion by his 
subordinates." ^ 

This failure on the part of Lee's lieutenants to co- 
operate was to cost the South and the Army of Northern 
Virginia dear. That night McClellan continued his 
retreat and by daylight the commands of Franklin, 
Slocum, Heintzelman, and Sumner had joined Porter 
on the uplands of Malvern Hill, where McClellan had 
determined to make his last stand. Here in what is 
esteemed one of the strongest positions that an army 
could assume — a high plateau, rising to the height of 
over 100 feet above the surrounding country, a mile and 
a half in length, by a half mile in breadth — admirably 
protected, both in front and on the sides, by deep bot- 
toms and swamps, with wide stretches of open ground 
beyond them, and approached only by two roads — the 
River Road and the Quaker Road — McClellan posted 
his army in a great crescent. It was, indeed, formidable 

■ Allan's "Army of Northern Virginia," pp. 120, 121. Cf. also " His- 
tory of the Civil War in America," Comte de Paris, vol. II, p. 132. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 181 

and could hardly have been stronger, with his remain- 
ing artillery, which — including his heavy siege guns, 
and aided by the raking fire from the gunboats in the 
river — was still powerful, covering with converging fire 
every point of the line. Here, however, notwithstand- 
ing the strength of the position, Lee determined to 
attack once more. 

All of the forenoon and a part of the afternoon were 
spent in reconnoissances, and it was not until four o'clock 
that the attack began. Jackson, who had now come 
up, was on 'the left, with Whiting to the left of the 
Quaker Road, and D. H. Hill to the right with one of 
Ewell's Brigades, while Jackson's own division, with the 
rest of Ewell's troops, was in reserve. A half mile 
beyond Jackson's right was Huger and behind him, 
to the left, was Magruder. Longstreet and A. P. Hill 
were in reserve behind Magruder on the Long Bridge 
Road and Holmes was on the River Road to the 
right. 

It was now five o'clock, and ^'if anything was to be 
done, no more time should be lost." General Lee was 
urgent that the assault be made. The original order 
for battle had been given about noon, and there had 
been fighting to the extreme left. Armistead and 
Wright had attempted to advance and had been 
repulsed with heavy loss, and, with their batteries 
hammered to pieces, had been forced to withdraw 
them, and now ''held their infantry in hand until the 
arrival of other troops." Here Whiting was carrying 
on a spirited but unequal artillery contest. Mean- 
time efforts had been made to bring the artillery to 



182 ROBERT E. LEE 

the front; but owing to the swamps and thickets 
through which they had to force their way, they were 
overpowered by the concentrated fire of the Federal 
guns before they got into action. The obstacles, says 
Lee in his report, '^presented by the woods and swamps 
made it impracticable to bring up a sufficient amount 
of artillery to oppose successfully the extraordinary 
force of that arm employed by the enemy, while the 
field itself offered so few positions favorable for its use 
and none for its proper concentration." 

Lee, according to Longstreet, proposed 'to him now 
to move to the left with his own and A. P. HilFs Di- 
visions and turn the Federal right, and this, he states, 
he issued his orders to do; but through some mistake 
the order to attack, which had already been issued, 
was not rescinded, and between five and six o'clock, 
Magruder, with only two brigades of his three divis- 
ions, Armistead's and Wright's, in position, engaged 
the enemy's left, and D. H. Hill, taking this for the 
signal, sent forward five brigades full against the ene- 
my's front, only to have them decimated and forced 
back under the terrible concentrated fire of McClel- 
lan's massed guns. 

From time to time after this, first in one part of the 
field and then in another, supports were sent in; in- 
trepid advances and furious charges were made; but 
there was no concert. ''The two divisions under Ma- 
gruder were beaten in detail ; two or three brigades at 
one time were sent forward, and when broken and beaten 
back, others took their places, only to meet a similar 
fate. The battle was a succession of "desperate but 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 183 

disjointed and badly managed charges"; and when 
night fell, though neither Longstreet nor A. P. Hill 
had been engaged, and three of Jackson's Divisions 
• — his own, Whiting's, and Swell's — had suffered little, 
and though Huger, on a point of etiquette, withheld 
supports, while Holmes had scarcely fought at all, five 
thousand Confederates had fallen bravely on the 
slopes of Malvern Hill, and McClellan's lines were still 
unbroken. 

For making the frontal attack which now began and 
which proved so deadly to the assailants, instead of 
attempting to turn McClellan's flank, Lee has been 
often and severely criticised. The frontal attack, how- 
ever, was due to the report made to Lee by Longstreet 
after Lee, who had been too indisposed himself to 
reconnoitre in person, had instructed Longstreet to 
reconnoitre the enemy's left and report whether an 
attack on that side was feasible. Jackson, it is said, 
was opposed to a frontal attack, preferring to turn the 
enemy's right. Longstreet, however, according to his 
own account, was of a different opinion and reported 
to General Lee that the "spacious open along Jackson's 
front appeared to offer a field for the play of a hun- 
dred or more guns," and he judged that it might 
justify assault, and the tremendous game at issue called 
for adventure. ''I thought it probable," he adds, 
'Hhat Porter's batteries under the cross-fire of the 
Confederate guns, posted on his left and front, could 
be thrown into disorder and thus make way for the 
combined assaults of the infantry. 

''I so reported, and General Lee ordered dispositions 



184 ROBERT E. LEE 

accordingly, sending the pioneer corps to cut a road for 
the right batteries." ^ 

It was a costly sacrifice; but that night McClellan, 
feeling that his men were completely worn out, and 
knowing how large a portion of Lee's army had not 
been engaged the day before, and assured that he might 
look for further trouble if he remained in that position, 
withdrew his army under cover of his gunboats. "My 
men are completely exhausted," he wrote that day 
before the battle, "and I dread the result if we are 
attacked to-day by fresh troops. If possible, I shall 
retire to-night to Harrison's Bar, where the gunboats 
can render more aid in covering our position. Permit 
me to urge that not an hour should be lost in sending 
me fresh troops. More gunboats are much needed."^ 

The failure of some of his lieutenants to grasp the 
situation prevented the complete success of Lee's plans, 
and McClellan not only got safely across White Oak 
Swamp, and reached a position at Malvern Hill of such 
strength that the attack on him here has been con- 
sidered by able critics almost the greatest error Lee 
ever committed; but saved his army. Whatever the 
errors of his lieutenants, Lee had saved Richmond. 
From this time he bore the fortunes of the Confederacy 
on his shoulders. 

Thus Lee had, with less than 80,000 men, by his 
audacious tactics and masterly handling of his troops, 
defeated McClellan with more than 105,000 men and 



* "From Manassas to Appomattox," p. 143. 

2 Report on Conduct of War, vol. I, p. 340. Allan's "Army of North- 
ern Virginia," p. 138. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 185 

superior equipment, and driven him from position after 
position, relieving Richmond from what had appeared 
imminent danger of immediate capture. 

MiHtary critics have often wondered why Jackson, 
who both before and after the seven days' fighting 
around Richmond proved himself the most eager, 
prompt, and aggressive heutenant that any commander 
had during the war, should apparently have been so 
slow in the execution of the part intrusted to him in 
this critical movement. Old soldiers who followed 
and adored him still discuss the mysterious failure, 
and admit that "Old Jack" was ''not himself" at this 
crisis. Not only did he fail to attack that first after- 
noon on his arrival within sound of the furious battle 
raging but a few miles away, but next day also he halted 
at Cold Harbor for over an hour while Hill and Long- 
street were left to put in their last battalions, and again 
at White Oak Swamp, two days later, he failed, as he 
hardly ever did either earlier or later, to make good 
his attempt to reach the enemy's line. 

An explanation of the first failure has been given 
that he mistook the road leading toward the field 
of Cold Harbor and missed his way. 

The writer, as a resident of that region, familiar with 
the country and with the discussion of the facts, vent- 
ures to suggest a simple explanation. 

The distance from the valley to the Chickahominy 
being about one hundred and thirty miles, the bringing 
forward of his troops, even with the indifferent assist- 
ance of his trains, occupied several days, and the 
general himself, with a staff officer, at a point some 



186 ROBERT E. LEE 

sixty-odd miles west of Richmond, left the train and 
rode to Richmond to consult with Lee as to details. 
His selection of this mode of travel has been attributed 
to his fear of being recognized if he should continue by 
train, but was no doubt partly to familiarize himself 
somewhat with the roads, which through Hanover wind 
among the forks of the Pamunkey through a thickly 
wooded, flat country, and are very confusing. It is of 
record that he then thought he could be up and ready 
to co-operate with Hill on the 25th, but General Long- 
street claims that he urged that this was impossible, and 
that if not the 27th, at the earliest the 26th should be 
set for the attack, which was agreed to. At Beaver 
Dam Station, on the railway, forty miles from Rich- 
mond, the last troops were taken from the train, and, 
together with those who had been marching the day 
before, took the road for Richmond by way of Honey- 
man's Bridge over the Little River, a branch of the 
North Anna, and then, owing to high water in the 
South Anna, instead of taking the shorter route by 
Groundsquirrel Bridge, some of them marched by way 
of the Fork Church to Ashland. From Little River to 
the field of Cold Harbor the roads are deep with sand, 
water is scant, and in the blazing days of late June the 
progress of the troops was much slower than had been 
reckoned on, and the move took nearly a day longer 
than had been expected. Meanwhile, Jackson, who 
had left his train and ridden sixty-odd miles to Rich- 
mond to confer with Lee, rode straight back to bring 
his men forward, met them at a point more than fifty 
miles from Richmond, and returned with them. Thus, 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 187 

when he reached the slashes of Hanover, he had been 
in the saddle almost continuously for several days and 
nights and was completely broken down/ 

Members of a troop of cavalry, known as the Han- 
over Troop (Co. C. 4th Virginia Cavalry), who came 
from that region, were detailed to act as guides for the 
troops, but many of the roads are mere tracks, and the 
man detailed to guide Jackson,^ on reaching the neigh- 
borhood of the battle-field, found so many new roads 
cut through the forest by McClellan's troops, and so 
many houses and other familiar landmarks gone, that 
he became confused and led the column some distance 
on the wrong road before discovering his error. It then 
became necessary to retrace their way; but, marching 
the other troops back and turning around the artillery 
in the narrow road, bordered by forest and thickets, 
much time was lost. Ewell, who was present, threat- 
ened to hang the guide; but Jackson intervened and 
bade him guide them back.^ This, however, does not 
account for Jackson's failure to attack earlier on the 
day of Gaines's Mill, or his failure to cross and aid 

" I remember as a boy seeing Jackson's columns passing down the 
road near my home in Hanover, some fifteen miles above Ashland, and 
every hour or so the men were made to lie down full-length on the 
ground to rest. The troops, or a portion of them, instead of keeping 
straight ahead across Newfound River and the South Anna by Ground- 
squirrel Bridge, turned off after crossing Little River at Honeyman's 
Bridge and marched to Ashland by the Fork Church. 

^ Lincoln Sydnor. 

^ The fact of Jackson's complete prostration is mentioned in a letter 
written at the time by his aide-de-camp, the gallant Major, afterward 
Lieutenant-Colonel, Alexander S. Pendleton, killed later at Fisher's 
Hill. The other circumstances I had stated to me in a letter from A. R. 
Ellerson, Esquire, a member of the Hanover troop, whose home was near 
Mechanicsville, and who was with Sydnor at Jackson's head-quarters 
and was sent with despatches from General Lee. See Appendix. 



188 ROBERT E. LEE 

Magruder on the afternoon of the day of Savage Sta- 
tion, and Longstreet and Hill on the day of Frazier's 
Farm. Colonel Henderson exculpates him from adverse 
criticism, and thinks that he had good ground for his 
action on each occasion, which is certainly high author- 
ity. But the fact remains unexplained, and as Allan, 
who admired him vastly, admits, "it is best to set it 
down as one of the few great mistakes of his marvel- 
lous career." ^ Never before or after did Jackson fail 
to march to the sound of the guns or fail to keep a 
rendezvous on the field of battle. 

One familiar only with the open fields to the west 
and north of Richmond would scarcely guess the ex- 
tent of the almost impenetrable thickets along the 
Chickahominy. They were wellnigh as much a terra 
incognita to the Southern leaders as to the Northern. 
Jackson, as already stated, even with a guide familiar 
with the region, got entangled among them on his forced 
march down to join Lee, on the Wednesday of the 
second day's battle around Richmond, and thus failed 
to make the junction at the critical moment. Wliile, 
however, these inextricable tangles of the swamps along 
the Chickahominy caused Lee much inconvenience, 
and frustrated portions of his plans for the destruction 
of the enemy, they stood him in good stead in his au- 
dacious attack on McClellan's far-stretched lines. They 
at once veiled his movements and offered a barrier 
broken only where the country roads of Hanover and 
Henrico pierced them at a few points easy to be de- 
fended. The swamps of the Chickahominy remained 

'Allan's "Army of Northern Virginia," p. 121. 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 189 

as dense and impenetrable as when John Smith, two 
centuries and a half before, had stuck fast in them a 
little lower down and fallen a prey to his enemies. 
For long distances they were so impenetrable that, as 
was said by the guide whom General Lee had sent for 
to pilot a part of his attacking forces, ''not even an 
old hare could get through." 

However it was, Lee relieved Richmond, and the 
war, from being based on the issue of a single cam- 
paign, was now a matter of years and treasure, and the 
years and the treasure that it required were mainly 
due to Lee's transcendent genius. It is probable that 
but for Lee the war would not have lasted two years. 

It is one of the notable facts connected with the con- 
duct of the war that the staff should have been so dis- 
proportioned to the demands on it. Nearly all critics 
have remarked on it. Lee had but few trained soldiers 
on his staff ; gallant gentlemen he had, men ready to lay 
down their lives for him or their cause; but not many 
of them men trained to war. Possibly, to this was due 
the fact that so often his best-laid plans failed of being 
exactly carried out. He never had a staff officer who 
could render him the service which he rendered Scott 
at Cerro Gordo and Contreras. He often rode with a 
single officer, and at times absolutely alone. And when 
toward the latter part of the war he wished to have 
his son as his chief of staff, the wish was denied him. 
Such was the strange constituency of the Confederate 
Government. 

Whatever criticism may have been offered, the South 
was jubilant, and amid its tears acclaimed Lee and his 



190 ROBERT E. LEE 

gallant army as its saviors. And Lee himself appears 
to have been well content with the issue. The results 
of the battles around Richmond were summed up by 
him as follows: - 

In his General Order (No. 75, dated July 7, 1862), 
tendering his ''warmest thanks and congratulations to 
the army by whose valor such splendid results were 
achieved," he says: "On Monday, June 26, the power- 
ful and thoroughly equipped army of the enemy was 
entrenched in works vast in extent and most formida- 
ble in character, within sight of our capital. 

''To-day the remains of that confident and threat- 
ening host lie upon the banks of the James River, 
thirty miles from Richmond, seeking to recover, under 
the protection of his gunboats, from the effects of a 
series of disastrous defeats. 

"The immediate fruits of your success are the relief 
of Richmond from a state of siege, the routing of the 
great army that so long menaced its safety, many 
thousand prisoners, including officers of high rank, the 
capture or destruction of stores to the value of millions, 
and the acquisition of thousands of arms and fifty-one 
pieces of superior artillery." 

He concludes, after a tribute to the "gallant dead 
who died nobly in defence of their country's freedom": 
"Soldiers, your country will thank you for the heroic 
conduct you have displayed — conduct worthy of men 
engaged in a cause so just and sacred, and deserving a 
nation's gratitude and praise." 

In the pride and joy of the victory, and in the relief 
that the great army which had been thundering at the 



BATTLES AROUND RICHMOND 191 

gates had been defeated and driven back, the people 
of the South took Httle account of the errors that had 
been committed by Lee's Ueu tenants, who were all gal- 
lant soldiers and able commanders. Yet it was due to 
these errors that McClellan's army had been only routed, 
and not destroyed. And no one knew it so well as Lee. 
Had Jackson turned Porter's wing as planned, Hill's 
vast losses would not have occurred, and Porter could 
never have rejoined McClellan. Had Magruder and 
Huger not failed to discover that McClellan was retreat- 
ing, he might never have crossed White Oak Swamp. 
Had Jackson made good his crossing at White Oak 
Swamp, McClellan would possibly not have had time to 
make his last stand at Malvern Hill, and might have 
lost his entire army. And finally, when Stuart, in ad- 
vance of the rest of Lee's army, reached Evelington 
Heights and found McClellan's army lying beneath him 
on the low grounds, had he but waited until Longstreet 
came up, instead of firing on them with a bare section 
of light artillery, the end might have come that day. 
As it was, in his eagerness he did not wait, and Long- 
street, whom he supposed close by, had taken another 
road. 



CHAPTER VIII 

LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 

Lee had thus in a month sprung almost to the full 
measure of fame. ''After the Seven Days' Battles," 
says Henderson, "the war assumed a new aspect. . . . 
The strategy which had relieved Richmond recalled 
the master-strokes of Napoleon." ^ 

The government at Washington, which had on the 
11th of July appointed Major-General William W. Hal- 
leck to the chief command of all the armies of the 
United States, had now determined to unite the forces 
of Fremont, Banks, and McDowell, though it was 
against the views of its principal advisers, including 
McClellan himself. Halleck's appointment followed 
immediately on a personal visit of Mr. Lincoln to Mc- 
Clellan's army on July 8, in which he ascertained that 
the army had 86,500 men present for duty, and 73,500 
absent, and that the sentiment there was that 100,000 
additional reinforcements were deemed necessary to 
march on Richmond with any hope of success. The 
general selected for the command was Major-General 
John Pope, an officer who was a distinguished graduate 
of West Point and who had achieved some success in 
the West. He had a self-confidence in which McClellan 
was somewhat wanting. He began by issuing a rodo- 

» "Life of Stonewall Jackson," II, 109. 
192 



LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 193 

montade which amused even his own army/ and he 
so inflamed the South by an order of banishment of all 
persons who would not take the oath of allegiance, and 
by threats of seizure of non-combatants as hostages,^ 
and of confiscation of their property, that a note was 
prepared by the Confederate Government excepting 
Pope and his officers from the cartel just signed with 
McClellan for the exchange of prisoners of war. Lee 
himself appears to have regarded Pope with amused 
contempt. He wrote Jackson, " I want Pope sup- 
pressed," and in a letter to his wife (July 28, 1862) he 
writes her to tell his youngest son, then a private in 
the Rockbridge Artillery under Jackson, "to catch 
Pope for me, and also bring in his cousin, Louis Mar- 
shall, who, I am told, is on his staff." And he adds: ''I 
could forgive the latter fighting against us, but not his 
joining Pope." 

The question, now, was whether to reinforce Mc- 
Clellan or Pope, and Burnside, who had been brought 
up from the South, was held at Newport News, at 
the mouth of the James, awaiting the decision of the 
civilian commanders in Washington. In this decision 
Lee bore a conspicuous part. 

Having assumed the offensive and won signal suc- 
cess, Lee was not a general to lose the fruit of his vic- 
tory and be forced back into a defensive position, the 
perils of which he well knew. McClellan was routed 
and driven back to the shelter of his gunboats ; but he 
was still within little more than a day's march of Rich- 

' Off. Rec, V, p. 552. 

* General Orders 7 and 11. 



194 ROBERT E. LEE 

mond, with an army which, though demoraHzed, yet 
outnumbered Lee's, and was, in its position, still for- 
midable/ And he could at any time cross to the south 
bank of the James and attack Richmond from that 
side and threaten the cutting off of communication 
with the South by the chief line of communication, the 
Richmond and Danville Railway, a move he urgently 
recommended, but as to which he was overruled by 
Halleck and the other authorities in Washington.^ 
McDowell, too, a gallant soldier and gentleman, was 
still at Fredericksburg with a good part of the First 
Corps, and hungry for a chance to atone for his dis- 
aster at Bull Run, and Pope, with another army 
greater than Lee could send against him, was advancing 
across the Piedmont, dating his letters from ''Head- 
quarters in the saddle," and boasting that he never 
saw anything but the backs of his enemies, and that 
*'if he had McClellan's army he would march to New 
Orleans."' 

Major-General Pope, in command of the united 
armies of Fremont, Banks, and McDowell, had in all 
some 70,000 men. He now lay on the rolling uplands 
between the upper Rappahannock and the Rapidan, 
headed for Gordonsville. Pope had, as already stated, 
incurred the hatred of the South by his orders to seize 
and shoot non-combatants in reprisal for the acts of 



' McClellan's army, by his return of July 10, showed present and 
equipped for duty, 98,631 men. On July 10, General Lee's report 
showed that, exclusive of the troops in North Carolina, he had 64,419 
men. 

2 Ropes, II, p. 238. 

* Pope gave his force as 43,000. Taylor's "General Lee," p. 86. 



LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 195 

what he termed "roving bands," and only complete 
success would have excused the gasconade which he 
addressed to his army, lauding himself and reflecting 
on those gallant but unfortunate officers whom he had 
supplanted. The Confederate Government declared 
him outside of the pale. 

If he should seize the Virginia Central Railroad he 
would destroy an important avenue with the South- 
west, and the one avenue of communication with the 
valley of Virginia. He was already on the Rapidan 
within a day's march of the important junction at Gor- 
donsville, and a little later his cavalry burnt Beaver 
Dam Station, forty miles from Richmond. If he should 
unite with McClellan the South would be lost. The 
situation was not a whit less critical than it had 
been on the 1st of June, when McClellan was advan- 
cing by approaches to shell Richmond. Moreover, 
President Lincoln had already called for 300,000 more 
men. 

But Lee was, of all men, the man to meet the situa- 
tion. It might well be said of him as Conde and 
Turenne said of Merci, that he never lost a favorable 
moment, or failed to anticipate their most secret de- 
signs, as if he had assisted in their councils. He knew 
that the needle is not more sensitive to the proximity 
of steel than was the government at Washington to 
the moving of Stonewall Jackson in their direction. 
Jackson was in favor of invading Northern territory, 
and had avouched his readiness to follow any one who 
would fight. Lee knew his mettle and used it. When 
some one said to Jackson: "This new general needs 



196 ROBERT E. LEE 

your attention," his reply was: "And, please God, he 
shall have it." This was Lee's feeling also. 

Let those who rank General Lee among the defen- 
sive captains say whether he acted on the defensive or 
offensive when, leaving only some 20,000 men to guard 
Richmond, with McClellan still at Harrison's Landing, 
hurrying troops now to the south side of the James, 
now to Malvern Hill, he with rare audacity turned on 
Pope, advancing with threatenings and slaughter across 
the Piedmont, and sent Jackson to strike him beyond 
the Rapidan. And when, after the first stroke at Cedar 
Mountain, he sent him sweeping around in a great half 
circle through Thoroughfare Gap, struck him, at Grove- 
ton, a staggering blow, and facing him on the rolling 
plain of Manassas, routed and drove him back to the 
shelter of the forts around Alexandria, and then with 
his army, ill-clad and ill-shod, so threatened the na- 
tional capital that McClellan was hastily recalled from 
the James to its defence. 

After a rest of about ten days, spent in watching 
McClellan, who from time to time was moving troops up 
to Malvern Hill, or across the James, as if to renew his 
attack on. Richmond, Lee addressed his attention to Pope. 
Pope, assured in his mind that he was on the march 
on Richmond, and boasting that with McClellan 's force 
he ''could march to New Orleans," pushed his army 
forward beyond Manassas, where he massed his supplies, 
and on across the Rappahannock with the intention of 
seizing the important point, Gordonsville, where the 
Orange and Alexandria Railroad from Washington 
united with the Virginia Central Railroad, the line con- 



LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 197 

necting Richmond with the valley of Virginia, and with 
the line running from Charlottesville to the South-west. 

Lee's soldier's eye promptly saw the perilous situa- 
tion in which Pope had placed himself, and his soldier's 
instinct promptly divined the means of striking him. 
Lee had now under him for Richmond's defence 64,419 
men, exclusive of the force in North Carolina, while 
McClellan, at Harrison's Landing, had 98,631 men 
(July 10). He conceived the audacious design of mass- 
ing his forces suddenly in Pope's front and, while he 
held him with a part, sending the remainder* around 
his right wing to turn his flank and sever his line of 
communication. He felt sure that that would relieve 
Richmond, but he hoped also to destroy Pope. Thus, 
while with a portion of his depleted army he covered 
Richmond, he prepared a stroke which should shake 
Washington and relieve Richmond. On the 13th he 
despatched Jackson with his division and Ewell's — 
in all, some 11,0U0 men — to Gordonsville to confront 
Pope, who reported to Washington a week later that 
Ewell was at Gordonsville with 6,000 men, and Jack- 
son at Louisa Court House, a short distance away, 
with 25,000 men. Pope heard of him first at Louisa, 
less than forty miles away. This sent Halleck off to 
consult McClellan in a hurry. McClellan thought he 
might have gone to the West to fight Buel. McClellan 
was strenuously urged by Halleck, who visited him 
for the purpose, to attack Richmond at once, and he 
assented provided he should be given 20,000 additional 
troops, which were promised him. 

The effect of Lee's bold movement was what he 



198 ROBERT E. LEE 

anticipated. A week later Washington knew that 
Jackson had left Richmond, but had no idea whither 
he was bound; for Jackson divulged his plans not 
even to his chief of staff. Jackson, on his arrival at 
Gordonsville, finding himself confronted by an army 
many times his own in numbers, applied to Lee for 
reinforcements. He had but about 11,000 men. At 
first Lee felt unable to meet his demand, but when 
Pope's cavalry raiders struck the Virginia Central 
Railroad at Beaver Dam and cut his line of com- 
munication within forty miles of Richmond, he de- 
spatched Stuart and A. P. Hill to Jackson's aid. 
This brought his force up to 18,700, with which Lee 
expressed the hope that Pope might be ''suppressed." 
Lee, who knew Jackson's extreme reticence, and evi- 
dently thought it not^always advantageous, wrote him 
to suggest his conferring with Hill, whom he recom- 
mended to him as "a good officer, with whom he could 
consult," adding, ''and by advising with your division 
commanders as to your movements, much trouble will 
be saved you in arranging details, and they can act 
more intelligently. I wish to save you trouble from 
my increasing your command. Cache your troops as 
much as possible," he adds, " till you can strike your 
blow, and be prepared to return to me when done, if 
necessary. I will endeavor to keep General McClellan 
quiet till it is over, if rapidly executed." ^ Culpeper 
was the key to the situation, as several roads met 
there. So Jackson was to go to Culpeper. On the 
9th of August Jackson, moving on Culpeper, attacked 

• Lee to Jackson, July 27, 1862. 



LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 199 

and defeated his old opponent, Banks, at Cedar Run, 
some twenty miles north of Gordonsville, and then 
withdrew toward Gordonsville to avoid attack by 
Pope's entire army until Lee should be ready to re- 
inforce him. Pope wrote that he would have Gordons- 
ville and Charlottesville in ten days. Washington, 
however, was in a panic. Burnside had been ordered 
up from the South to reinforce McClellan, who was 
clamoring for an additional 100,000 men; but he was 
still held at Newport News so that he ''might move 
on short notice, one way or the other, where ordered." 
And on the 14th of August McClellan received orders 
from Washington to withdraw his army from the Penin- 
sula for the protection of the national capital. Lee 
had already freed his mind of anxiety as to McClellan. 
As has been well said, he read him like an open book. 
He knew that for the present McClellan would give no 
more trouble on the Peninsula, and his quarry now was 
Pope. He wished to strike him swiftly before McClellan 
could join him. On the 13th day of August, Lee, having 
matured his plans and feeling secure as to Richmond, 
even though McClellan moved a division up to occupy 
Malvern Hill, as if to move again on Richmond, ordered 
Longstreet with Hood to Gordonsville, sending thither 
also R. H. Anderson, and going himself to take per- 
sonal charge. He had thus massed quickly some 54,000 
men ready for his stroke, leaving only two brigades for 
the defence of Richmond. But President Davis wrote 
him: "Confidence in you overcomes the view which 
would otherwise be taken. ^ Jackson was eager to attack 

'Ropes's "Story of the Civil War," II, p. 254. Colonel William 
Allan, p. 199, n. 18, W. R., pp. 928, 945. 



200 ROBERT E. LEE 

at once, but Lee decided to wait till the men had suf- 
ficient supplies. On the 19th he issued his order for 
attack on the 20th. In the interval, however, a serious 
contretemps [occurred which upset his well-conceived 
plan. Pope captured Stuart's adjutant-general ^ with a 
letter on his person from General Lee to General Stuart, 
setting forth fully his plans, and making manifest to 
Pope his position and force, and his determination 
to overwhelm the army under Pope before it could 
be reinforced by the Army of the Potomac. This ac- 
cident Stuart offset partially a few days later, when, 
in a night attack at Catlett's Station, he captured 
Pope's head-quarters and effects, including his despatch- 
book, containing important information throwing light 
on the strength, movements, and designs of the enemy, 
and disclosing General 'Pope's own views against his 
ability to defend the line of the Rappahannock.^ But 
Pope's despatches only made it appear imperative for 
Lee to attack him before the forces from McClellan 
and the Shenandoah should join him and make his 
army overwhelmingly strong. Lee's, on the other 
hand, enabled Pope to save his army and retire to a 
position behind the Rappahannock, where he could 
await these reinforcements. 

This ''fortunate accident" of the capture of Lee's 
letter containing his plans saved Pope for the time 
being. It was a revelation to him, and suddenly aware 
of the peril of his position, he hastily withdrew behind 
the Rappahannock, thereby preventing the cutting off 
of his army from his base of supplies as Lee had planned. 

* Major Fitzhugn. Pope's repor . 

'^ General Stuart's report, cited in Taylor's "General Lee." 



LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 201 

"This retreat," says Ropes in his history of the cam- 
paign, ''was made not a day too soon. Pope's army 
had been, in truth, in an extremely dangerous position. 
... All this is very plain, but apparently it was not 
seen by General Pope until the capture of one of the 
officers of Stuart's staff put him in possession of Lee's 
orders to his army.^ Lee was greatly disappointed 
at Pope's escape," continues this able critic,^ and he 
proceeds to show how, had Pope not retreated precipi- 
tately, he ''would have been attacked in flank and rear, 
and his conmaunications severed into the bargain. 
Doubtless," he adds, "he would have made a strenu- 
ous fight, but defeat under such circumstances might 
well have been ruin. From this disaster fortune saved 
Pope through the capture of Stuart's staff officer." ' 

The credit for this brilliant conception of destroy- 
ing Pope, Henderson rather gives to Jackson; but no 
matter who originated the idea, the true credit, as 
he shows in another connection, belongs to him on 
whom rested the responsibility of the final decision 
on which hangs the fate of the cause. This decision 
Lee made, and when he arrived in the Piedmont he 
held to his decision, though Pope had withdrawn his 
army to a far more defensible line than when he 
thought of pursuing Jackson to Gordonsville. Hav- 
ing satisfied himself as to Pope's dispositions, Lee, un- 
swerving in his audacious design, determined to attack 
him beyond the Rappahannock, where he lay on the 



» Ropes's "Story of the Civil War," pp. 256, 257. 
"Lee to Jackson, July 23, 1862, W. R., p. 916. 
' Ropes, II, pp. 257, 258. 



202 ROBERT E. LEE 

left bank, on both sides of the Orange and Alexandria 
Railway, awaiting his reinforcements. Thus, while 
Longstreet was directed to hold his front, Jackson 
was sent up the stream to cross beyond Pope at some 
point and turn his right. This plan left Pope between 
Lee and Richmond, but Lee had no fears on this score; 
for it left him between Pope and Washington, and if he 
were successful, Pope would not be tiying to capture 
Richmond, but to save his army. Stuart, under cover 
of the artillery, forced a passage at Beverly Ford, some 
miles above the railroad, but was forced to withdraw, 
and Jackson marched on higher up the river in pursu- 
ance of Lee's order, to "seek a more favorable place to 
cross," and on the afternoon of the 22d reached the 
Sulphur Springs. A great rain, however, fell that night 
and raised the river suddenly after he had sent Early 
with a brigade or two across, leaving them isolated and 
preventing their relief for several days. This rain, in 
Ropes's opinion, saved Pope, who was now strictly on 
the defensive, and was being encouraged by Halleck 
to ''fight like the devil." ^ Meantime Longstreet, on 
the 23d, drove off the force guarding the railroad 
bridge at Rappahannock Station and the bridge was 
burned. 

It was after five days spent in trying to reach Pope's 
right beyond the swollen Rappahannock, that Lee put 
in operation his famous flank movement by which, 
holding Pope's front with half his force, he despatched I 
Jackson, together with a part of Stuart's Cavalry, to 
circle quite around Pope's right and, crossing the Bull 

> Ibid., II, pp. 259, 260. 16, W. R., pp. 56, 57. 



LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 203 

Run Mountains at Thoroughfare Gap, strike his line of 
communication in his rear. Considering that Pope had 
under him, on the Rappahannock, an army which, 
making allowance for all losses, '^ numbered upward 
of 70,000 when Lee undertook this novel and perilous 
operation," one may well agree with Ropes that "the 
disparity between this force and that of Jackson is so 
enormous that it is impossible not to be amazed at the 
audacity of the Confederate general." ^ 

Lee, however, was now assured of the withdrawal 
of McClellan's army as a consequence of his auda- 
cious strategy in threatening Washington, and having 
massed his forces with a view to attacking Pope, he 
proceeded to carry out his plans, however "novel and 
perilous," undisturbed by any forebodings. Almost 
due north of where Pope lay protected by the Rappa- 
hannock, beginning a few miles north of Sulphur 
Springs, just above Pope's right, and running due 
north and south, lies a range of low mountains, forming 
an outlying wing of the Blue Ridge. In this range of 
mountains are several gaps through which wind rough 
country roads. But most of these gaps lay too near 
Pope's army to be attempted with any hope of success. 
One of them, however, lay so far to the northward that 
it had not been considered necessary to secure it. 
Lee's plan now was to send Jackson and Stuart around 
to the westward of this range as far as Thoroughfare 
Gap, and have them cross the range at this point and 
attack Pope in the rear, cutting and, if possible, de- 
stroying his line of communications. And meanwhile 

» Ihid., II, pp. 261, 262. Allen, pp. 212, 213. 



204 ROBERT E. LEE 

Longstreet was to keep him occupied and then, steal- 
ing away, was to follow Jackson by the same route 
and join him for the purpose of attack or defence, as 
circumstances should develop. The plan worked out 
in a way which has become one of the romantic stories 
of the history of war. Sending Jackson up the now 
swollen stream to find a crossing-place well beyond 
Pope's right, and Longstreet after him to demonstrate 
in Pope's front and follow Jackson at the proper time, 
Lee awaited confidently the result of his audacious plan. 
Jackson withdrew to Jefferson, a few miles south-west 
of Sulphur Springs, on the evening of the 24th, and 
Longstreet took his place after dark. Next day, while 
Longstreet demonstrated as if preparing to cross at 
Waterloo and Sulphur Springs, Jackson, starting from 
Jefferson, crossed the river at a point four miles above 
Waterloo. Keeping to the west of the mountains, he 
marched twenty-five miles a day, bivouacked at Salem, 
and pushing forward with '4iis accustomed vigor and 
celerity," crossed the Bull Run Mountains at Thorough- 
fare Gap, and, finding the way clear, headed straight 
for the line of Pope's communication at the rear of his 
army. At Gainesville, on the day after he started, he 
was joined by Stuart with two brigades of cavalry. 
Here, after a record-making march, about nightfall, on 
the 26th, while Pope thought he was headed for the 
valley of the Shenandoah/ Jackson, having circled com- 
pletely around Warren ton, where Pope had his head- 
quarters, struck the railway at Bristoe Station between 
Pope and the city he was supposed to be covering. Here 

' 18, W. R., pp. 653, 665. 



LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 205 

he destroyed the bridge across Broad Run, which ren- 
dered him safe for the time being from an attack from 
the direction of Warrenton, and then turned his atten- 
tion to the capture of Pope's great depot of suppHes. 
He despatched Stuart that night with his cavalry and 
two of Trimble's Regiments, who though they had 
marched twenty-five miles that day had volunteered 
for the occasion, to capture Manassas Junction, six 
miles away, with its vast stores for Pope's army, which 
was successfully accomplished by midnight, the cap- 
tures including two batteries of artillery and some 
300 prisoners. Next morning, leaving Ewell to guard 
Bristoe Station, Jackson proceeded to Manassas, where 
he was joined later by Ewell, who had been forced 
back from Bristoe Station after a sharp fight, and who 
brought the information that Pope had turned on him 
with his full force. That morning Pope had issued 
orders to abandon the line of the Rappahannock.^ 

Ewell's retreat had far-reaching consequences. Pope 
at first thought that the attack on Manassas was a 
mere cavalry raid, and when he learned differently 
and sent a sufficient force to Bristoe Station to drive 
Ewell off, he conceived the idea that he had defeated 
Jackson's whole army. He was afterward to learn that 
this was an even more fatal mistake than the first. 
That same night Pope, who appears to have thought 
that his enemy was delivered into his hands, issued 
orders for his entire army to concentrate at or near 
Manassas Junction, and a manifesto that he would 
"bag the whole crowd." Jackson had other views. 

' 16, W. R., pp. 34, 70. Ropes, II, p. 266. 



206 ROBERT E. LEE 

Lee's plan had not stopped at the destruction of Pope's 
supplies. He proposed also the destruction of his 
army. If Pope should be allowed to retire on Wash- 
ington and await the arrival of McClellan's army, the 
chief object of his daring move would have been frus- 
trated. This Jackson understood. Having now re- 
freshed his men, he proposed to carry out the main 
purpose of his perilous move. While Pope was con- 
centrating to bag him at Manassas, Jackson, under 
cover of darkness, left that point, and marching up 
Bull Run beyond where Sigel lay to participate in the 
work of bagging him, moved on the night of the 27th 
to the westward of the turnpike and took a position 
in the woods near Groveton, where he could await 
Longstreet's arrival by way of Thoroughfare Gap, or 
himself retire through either this gap or Aldie Gap, to 
the northward, should necessity arise. His army com- 
prised only about 18,000 men, but it was a fighting 
force unexcelled in history. 

On the afternoon of the 28th, Jackson, lying in the 
hills near Groveton, almost surrounded by Pope's 
army, learned that a large force was moving down the 
turnpike toward Centre ville, where Pope had finally 
determined to concentrate. This was King's division 
of McDowell's command, which was on its way to help 
bag him at Manassas. He immediately sprang upon 
them, and the result was one of the most obstinately 
contested of the minor fields of the war.^ The losses I 
on both sides were heavy; for on both sides the men 
fought from start to finish with extraordinary gallantry. 

' Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson," II, p. 149. 



LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 207 

The Confederate losses were the heaviest, however, 
and among the 1,200 or more casualties was the gallant 
old Ewell, who was desperately wounded. Pope, ob- 
sessed with the idea that Jackson was trying to escape, 
issued an order stating that McDowell had intercepted 
his retreat, and with Sigel on his front he could not 
escape. That night, however, the Federals withdrew 
and retired toward Manassas, and next day it was known 
that Pope ''had taken a position to cover Washington 
against Jackson's advance." Strategically, however, 
the engagement was decisive. Jackson had brought 
on the fight with the view of drawing the whole Fed- 
eral army on himself, and he was entirely successful.^ 
Thus, this part of Lee's plan had been completely carried 
out. Jackson, knowing that there was stern work ahead 
of him, now posted himself in a defensive position par- 
tially protected by the line of an unfinished railway ex- 
tending north-eastwardly from the Warrenton Turnpike, 
and awaited Longstreet (with whom was Lee himself), 
who, having been relieved by R. H. Anderson, had 
crossed the river at Hinson's Mill, the*same point where 
Jackson had crossed several days before, and was push- 
ing forward for Thoroughfare Gap, which he reached 
on the afternoon of the 28th. Ricketts had been 
posted here till he was ordered away to help bag Jack- 
son, but a force still occupied the Gap. Finding the 
Gap in possession of the enemy, Longstreet was forced 
to carry it by assault, and did not reach Jackson till 
the following afternoon. But though he had been 

» Allan, p. 231. Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson," II, pp. 179, 235. 
Ropes, II, p. 272. 



208 ROBERT E. LEE 

delayed, he was in time for the final struggle, and Lee's 
masterly strategy was justified. It was well that he had 
carried the pass, for Pope had brought up all his army 
to crush Jackson. It is agreed that the removal of 
Rickett's conamand from the Gap to help bag Jackson 
was a cardinal error. Lee had had tidings from Jack- 
son as late as the 26th, saying that he was able to main- 
tain himself till support should arrive. But he knew 
the peril of his position, and he was eager to relieve him. 
As he now with Longstreet's command emerged from 
the Gap next morning (29th) the sound of the guns 
toward Manassas, twelve miles away, told that the 
battle was on and that Jackson was fighting for his life. 
It, however, told precisely where Jackson was, and this 
guided them to the field where Pope's army, now being 
massed for his destruction, was being led against his 
well-chosen position. Jackson fought along the line of 
an unfinished railway embankment, with his artillery 
on a ridge behind him, his left secured by Bull Run and 
by Stuart's Cavalry, his right by the cavalry and the 
commanding artillery posted behind him. Hill was on 
his left in three lines, E well's Division on his centre 
and right. The battle began by an attack on his centre 
and left about seven o'clock, and from this time till 
sunset it raged along the whole field. 

Pushing forward by Gainesville, Longstreet moved to 
Jackson's right, where Porter, guarding the enemy's 
left, lay beyond him to his right. The battle had been 
raging for hours when Lee reached the field. Sigel, 
eager to settle old Valley scores, was striving to hold 
Jackson in check until Pope could concentrate his full 



LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 209 

force to destroy him. His attack on Jackson's left, 
fierce as it was, had failed, though once for a short space 
Hill's first line had been broken, and it required all his 
reserves to re-establish it. Hooker had now come up 
on Pope's right with Kearney and Reno — some 18,000 
men, fresh and full of fight — and McDowell and Porter 
were ordered to come in on his left and roll up Jack- 
son's centre and right and thus sweep the field. This 
Pope, who had now taken personal command' had no 
doubt of being able to do. He reckoned, however, 
without his host. Lee had now come up with Long- 
street, and Jackson knew that his long-cherished de- 
sign had reached fulfilment. Other corps were soon 
put in, and for hours the battle raged '^with incessant 
fury and varying success, but Jackson stubbornly held 
his ground, though the fighting was often hand to 
hand and the bayonet was in constant requisition." ^ 
In all this fighting Longstreet took little part, though 
Lee himself three times expressed to him his wish that 
he should attack and thus relieve the hard-pressed Jack- 
son. As General Lee did not positively order him in, 
he determined to wait and attack next day, should a 
weak place be found in the enemy's lines, and he left 
Jackson and Hill to hold their position alone, except 
for the aid afforded them by a reconnoissance in force 
by three gallant brigades — Hood's and Evans's, with 
Wilcox in support. The command of Fitz John Por- 
ter, numbering some 10,000 men, lay near Gainesville, 
deployed to engage any force in their front, and Long- 
street thought the enemy was marching on him from 

' Taylor's "General Lee," p. 106. 



210 ROBERT E. LEE 

the rear and failed to press in to Jackson's aid. When 
evening fell Porter's menace had held Longstreet back 
from the counterstroke which Lee had desired to give, 
and le could not have done more had he attempted to 
carry out Pope's urgent last order. Thus Porter, not- 
withstanding the stern charges made against him later 
and their fatal result, fully performed his task.* Lee 
knew next morning that he need not deliver the attack 
he had contemplated — that Pope would save him the 
trouble. Fortunately for Lee, he knew also that Pope 
thought Jackson was in a perilous position and was 
anxious only to escape, and he disposed his troops 
to take advantage of this erroneous view, which he 
did completely. Pope, who, notwithstanding five 
successive repulses and the loss of some 8,000 men, 
claimed to have won the battle of the evening before, 
was still laboring under 'Hhe strange hallucination" 
that Jackson was in full retreat, and he massed his 
army to destroy or ^'bag" him, giving McDowell the 
''general charge of the pursuit." Such a pursuit was 
never known l^efore or since. He did not believe that 
Longstreet had arrived, though Porter had warned 
him of the fact, and while he was informed that 
troops had passed through Thoroughfare Gap the day 
before, he was confident that they were Jackson's troops 
in retreat. He had now some 65,000 men directly 
under his hand, and he not unnaturally felt able to 
crush any force opposed to him. Accordingly, having 
placed his army in a position to sweep the whole field 
at once, he, about noon, gave the order to advance. 

' Ropes, II, p. 281. 




THORO 

SladisonC 



Kadiso 




General Map op the Country Around Ma ^^assas Junction 



t* 



LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 211 

Porter had been moved over to the right, and Reynolds 
was on the left facing Longstreet. Pope was certain 
of victory and moved deliberately. Thus, it was after- 
noon before Pope's gallant lines advanced to the attack 
along the Warrenton Pike, with Porter leading against 
Jackson's front in such force that Jackson called on 
Lee for reinforcements. Lee immediately ordered Gen- 
eral Longstreet in, and his whole line became engaged 
from Jackson's left, stretching to Bull Run, on the 
north of the turnpike, to Stuart's Hill, on the south, 
where Longstreet 's right extended, with Stuart on his 
right. The guns massed behind swept the open space 
before Lee's lines and made them a field of death. 
Supposing still that the force in ront was but a part 
of Jackson's army left to guard his retreat, Pope was 
taken by surprise when from the railway an army arose 
and poured a deadly fire on his advancing ranks. But 
never did brave men meet braver. Driven back by 
the deadly blast, the assailants rallied again and again 
till five assaults had been made. The fighting was 
from this time furious. Line after line came on under 
the leaden sleet with a courage which aroused the ad- 
miration of their antagonists and called for the utmost 
exertion to repel them. But mortal flesh could not 
stand against the rain of shot and shell poured down 
on the brigades "piling up against Jackson's right, 
centre, and left," ^ and they melted away in the fiery 
furnace. "Their repeated efforts to rally were," as 
Lee reported, "unavailing, and Jackson's troops, being 
thus relieved from the pressure of overwhelming num- 

' Lee's report, Taylor's "General Lee," pp. 112, 113. 



212 ROBERT E. LEE 

bers, began to press steadily forward, driving the enemy 
before tliem." As they retreated in confusion Lee 
ordered a general advance; but "Longstreet, antici- 
pating the order for a general advance, now threw his 
whole command against the Federal centre and left, 
and the whole line swept steadily on, driving the enemy 
with great carnage from each successive position." It 
is a modest and uncolored report of the general move- 
ments made by the victorious comimander. The vic- 
tory viewed in the light of all the facts was one of the 
most complete in all the war. '^As Porter rolled back 
from Jackson's front," says Henderson, 'Hhe hand of 
a great captain snatched control of the battle from 
Pope." Lee had seen his opportunity and thrown his 
whole army on the retreating foe in one supreme and 
masterly counterstroke. The result was a victory, com- 
plete and overwhelming. 

Yet, even thus, Pope ''with an audacity which dis- 
aster was powerless to tame," reported to Halleck that 
*'the enemy was badly whipped," and that he had 
"moved back because he was largely outnumbered," 
and his army was without food. In fact, Pope's army 
was in rout; when Franklin arrived on the 30th, he 
found it necessary to throw a division across the road 
between Centreville and Bull Run to stop the "indis- 
criminate mass of men, horse, and guns, and wagons, 
all going pell-mell to the rear. Officers of all grades," 
he states, ''from brigadier-generals down, were in the 
throng." When McClellan took charge on the 2d he 
placed the stragglers at 20,000, and Halleck's mes- 
senger placed them at 30,000. 



LEE RELIEVES RICHMOND 213 

Thus by Lee's "novel and perilous movement," car- 
ried out to complete success, was won the great battle 
of Second Manassas, which completed the campaign by 
which he relieved Richmond. 

With 50,000 men he had routed and driven Pope 
from his menacing position with (as Ropes states) 
70,000 men, as gallant as any soldiers in the world, 
captured more than 9,000 prisoners, 30 pieces of artil- 
lery, upward of 20,000 stand of small arms, numerous 
colors, and a large amount of stores/ 

During the night Pope withdrew to the north side 
of Bull Run and occupied a strong position on the 
heights about Centreville. But by this time the hunter 
had become the hunted. Lee, driving for the fruits of 
his dearly won victory, ordered Jackson to push for- 
ward around Pope's right, while Longstreet engaged 
him in front, and Pope, now thoroughly demoralized, 
retired first on Fairfax Court House, and after a sharp 
engagement with Jackson at Chantilly, to the secure 
shelter of the formidable forts at Alexandria. Lee 
says in his report that "it was found that the enemy 
had conducted his retreat so rapidly that the attempt 
to interfere with him was abandoned. The proximity of 
the fortifications around Alexandria and Washington 
rendered further pursuit useless." In this last fight 
the brave Kearny was killed. Having ridden into the 
Confederate lines by accident, he- was shot as he at- 
tempted to escape. 

' Lee's report, cited in Taylor's "General Lee," p. 117. The Federal 
losses were 1,738 killed and 10,135 wounded. Confederate losses, 
1,090 killed and 6,154 wounded. Pope had certainly over 70,000 men. 
See Ropes, cited ante. Henderson places his forces at 80,000. 



214 ROBERT E. LEE 

"Lee, with his extraordinary insight into character," 
says Henderson/ "had played on Pope as he had played 
on McClellan, and his strategy was justified by success. 
In the space of three weeks he had carried the war 
from the James to the Potomac; with an army that at 
no time exceeded 55,000 men, he had driven 80,000 
men into the fortifications of Washington." It was 
a proof of Pope's utter demoralization that he tele- 
graphed that unless something were ''done to restore 
the tone of his army, it would melt away," and that he 
attacked as the cause of his disaster the gallant Fitz 
John Porter with a vehemence which might better 
have been employed on the field of Manassas, and 
placed on this fine soldier and honorable gentleman a 
stigma which it took a generation to extirpate. 

In any event, it was the end of the gascon, Pope. He 
was transferred to the North-west to hold the Indians 
in awe, and before a great while resigned. Such was 
the fruit of Lee's bold generalship, and he was now to 
give a yet further proof of his audacity and skill. 

' " Life of stonewall Jackson," II, p. 187. 



CHAPTER IX 

LEE'S AUDACITY— ANTIETAM AND 
CHANCELLORSVILLE 

Lee's move against Pope was not merely the boldest, 
and possibly the most masterly, piece of strategy in the 
whole war; it was, as has been well said, ''one of the 
most brilliant and daring movements in the history of 
wars." He was already beginning to be confronted by 
the enemy before which his victorious legions were 
finally to succumb. The region which had hitherto 
been the seat of war had been swept so clean and the 
means of transportation had become so unreliable that 
it was necessary for the subsistence of his army, if for 
no other reason, to shift the field of operations. But 
though the South had lost a year in its refusal to do 
more than defend its own borders, the exigencies of 
war made it apparent that this theory must be aban- 
doned if success were to be sought. Another motive 
also now operated with Lee. Three armies had been 
defeated, and the only reply that the Union Gov- 
ernment had made had been to call for more troops 
from her inexhaustible resources. It was possible that 
a victorious invasion of the North might force the 
North to make peace. Such a move might bring about 
the recognition of the Southern Confederacy by Great 
Britain and France, and this would open her ports and 
give her access to the world. Or it might compel the 

215 



216 ROBERT E. LEE 

North to make peace. But the immediate cause oper- 
ating with Lee was the necessity to reheve Virginia and 
subsist his men. Accordingly he did not pause to 
enjoy his victory. His army was wellnigh shoeless, 
and the South was unable to help him. Need became 
the handmaid of strategy. He was nearer to Wash- 
ington than to Richmond. Maryland lay the other 
side of Pope's army. He would place that army and the 
other armies also between him and Riclimond. He de- 
termined to march around Pope's army and invade 
Maryland to subsist his army and relieve Virginia, and 
to give Maryland the power to join the Southern Con- 
federacy, which it was believed she longed to do. 

Lee, therefore, who, as we have seen, had, in the be- 
ginning of the war, held that the South should act 
strictly on the defensive, now, after the war had pro- 
ceeded for more than a year, reached a different con- 
clusion. For what appeared good reasons, he made up 
his mind that he should advance into IMaryland. Prob- 
ably he felt that Maryland was properly a part of the 
South, and he so indicates in his correspondence. Before 
taking this step, however, he wrote the following letter 
to President Davis, giving him his reasons for the move: 

Head-quarters, Alexandria and Leesburg Road, 

NEAR Dranesville, September 3, 1862. 
His Excellency, President Davis. 

Mr. President: The present seems to be the most pro- 
pitious time since the commencement of the war for the 
Confederate army to enter Maryland. The two grand 
armies of the United States that have been operating 
in Virginia, though now united, are much weakened 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 217 

and demoralized. Their new levies, of which I under- 
stand 60,000 men have aheady been posted in Washing- 
ton, are not yet organized, and will take some time to 
prepare for the field. If it is ever desired to give ma- 
terial aid to Maryland and afford her an opportunity 
of throwing off the oppression to which she is now sub- 
ject, this would seem the most favorable. 

After the enemy had disappeared from the vicinity 
of Fairfax Court House and taken the road to Alex- 
andria and Washington, I did not think it would be 
advantageous to follow him farther. I had no inten- 
tion of attacking him in his fortifications, and am not 
prepared to invest them. If I possessed the necessary 
munitions, I should be unable to supply provisions for 
the troops. I therefore determined, while threatening 
the approaches to Washington, to draw the troops into 
Loudoun, where forage and some provisions can be 
obtained, menace their possession of the Shenandoah 
Valley, and, if found practicable, to cross into Mary- 
land. The purpose, if discovered, will have the effect 
of carrying the enemy north of the Potomac, and if pre- 
vented will not result in much evil. 

The army is not properly equipped for an invasion 
of an enemy's territory. It lacks much of the material 
of war, is feeble in transportation, the animals being 
much reduced, and the men are poorly provided with 
clothes, and in thousands of instances are destitute of 
shoes. Still, we cannot afford to be idle, and, though 
weaker than our opponents in men and military equip- 
ments, must endeavor to harass if we cannot destroy 
them. I am aware that the movement is attended 
with much risk, yet I do not consider success impossible, 
and shall endeavor to guard it from loss. As long as the 
army of the enemy are employed on this frontier I have 
no fears for the safety of Richmond, yet I earnestly 
recommend that advantage be taken of this period of 



218 ROBERT E. LEE 

comparative safety to place its defence, both by land 
and water, in the most perfect condition. A respect- 
able force can be collected to defend its approaches by 
land, and the steamer Richmond, I hope, is now ready 
to clear the river of hostile vessels. 

Should General Bragg find it impracticable to operate 
to advantage on his present frontier, his army, after 
leaving sufficient garrisons, could be advantageously 
employed in opposing the overwhelming numbers which 
it seems to be the intention of the enemy now to con- 
centrate in Virginia. 

I have already been told by prisoners that some of 
Buell's cavalry have been joined to General Pope's 
army, and have reason to believe that the whole of 
McClellan's, the larger portion of Burnside's and Cox's, 
and a portion of Hunter's are united to it. 

What occasions me most concern is the fear of getting 
out of ammunition. I beg you will instruct the Ord- 
nance Department to spare no pains in manufacturing 
a sufficient amount of the best kind, and to be par- 
ticular, in preparing that for the artillery, to provide 
three times as much of the long-range ammunition as 
of that for smooth-bore or short-range guns. The 
points to which I desire the ammunition to be forwarded 
will be made known to the department in time. If the 
Quartermaster's Department can furnish any shoes, it 
would be the greatest relief. We have entered upon 
September, and the nights are becoming cool. 

I have the honor to be, with high respect, your obe- 
dient servant, 

R. E. Lee, General. 



Another motive also operated with Lee in causing 
him to advance into Maryland. He desired peace, and 
he felt now as he felt when he again crossed the Potomac 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 219 

in the following year that such a move might lead to 
peace with honor. On the 8th of September he wrote 
President Davis the following letter: 

Head-quakters, near Fredericktown, Md., 

September 8, 1862. 
His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, 

President of the Confederate States, Richmond, Va. 

Mr. President: The present position of affairs, in my 
opinion, places it in the power of the government of 
the Confederate States to propose with propriety to 
that of the United States the recognition of our inde- 
pendence. For more than a year both sections of the 
country have been devastated by hostilities which have 
brought sorrow and suffering upon thousands of homes 
without advancing the objects which our enemies pro- 
posed to themselves in beginning the contest. Such a 
proposition, coming from us at this time, could in no 
way be regarded as suing for peace, but, being made 
when it is in our power to inflict injury upon our ad- 
versary, would show conclusively to the world that our 
sole object is the establishment of our independence 
and the attainment of an honorable peace. The rejec- 
tion of this offer would prove to the country that the 
responsibility of the continuance of the war does not 
rest upon us, but that the party in power in the United 
States elect to prosecute it for purposes of their own. 
The proposal of peace would enable the people of the 
United States to determine at their coming elections 
whether they will support those who favor a prolonga- 
tion of the war or those who wish to bring it to a termi- 
nation which can but be productive of good to both 
parties without affecting the honor of either. 

I have the honor to be, with high respect, your obe- 
dient servant, 

R. E. Lee, General. 



220 ROBERT E. LEE 

On the 2d of September, amid the gloom cast by 
Pope's disastrous defeat, McClellan was requested by 
Mr. Lincoln to take command of the defence of Wash- 
ington, and at once took command of Pope's shattered 
army. On the same day Lee issued his order to cross 
the Potomac, and, screened by Stuart's Cavalry, Jack- 
son, whose corps was to form the advance, headed for 
the fords above Leesburg. It had been hoped, as Lee's 
letters show, that Maryland would rise and declare for 
the South. Maryland did not respond. Her popula- 
tion who espoused the cause of the South lay mainly to 
the eastward. Her western population were affected by 
the proximity to the mountain population of Virginia. 
However, her Legislature had been arrested, and the 
machinery of her government had been thrown out of 
gear. Henderson suggests a further reason for this 
indifference on the part of her people in the uninviting 
appearance of Lee's ragged soldiery. Moreover, they 
were accustomed to the Federal occupation, and it 
was a hazardous experiment to side actively with the 
South unless she should first show herself able to pro- 
tect them. Lee issued a proclamation on the 8th, call- 
ing on the people to rise and enjoy once more the in- 
alienable rights of freemen; but assuring them that 
no constraint would be put on them by his army and 
no intimidation would be allowed. He declared it was 
for them to decide their destiny freely and without 
restraint, and that his army would respect their choice, 
whatever it might be.^ Thus reassured, Maryland re- 
mained quiescent. Those who espoused the South's 

' F. Lee's " Lee," p. 198. 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 221 

cause had long since crossed the border and shed their 
blood on many a hard-fought field. The remainder 
continued neutral. This, however, was not the cause 
of Lee's failure. That he did not reap the full fruits of 
this wonderful generalship was due to one of those 
strange events which, so insignificant in itself, yet under 
Him who 

" Views with equal eye, as God of All, 
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall," 

is fateful to decide the issues of nations. McClellan 
moved to Frederick, on the east side of South Moun- 
tain, two days after Lee crossed to the westward. As 
the capture of Lee's letter and plans had given Pope 
warning and led him to retire his army behind the Rap- 
pahannock in time to save it, so now an even stranger 
fate befell Lee. A copy of his despatch giving his en- 
tire plan was picked up at Frederick, wrapped about 
a handful of cigars, on the site of a camp formerly occu- 
pied by D. H. Hill, and promptly reached McClellan, 
thus betraying to him a plan which but for this strange 
accident might have resulted in the complete over- 
throw of his army, and even in the capture of the na- 
tional capital, and enabling him with his vast resources 
to frustrate it. A man's carelessness usually reacts 
mainly upon himself, but few incidents in the history 
of the world have ever been fraught with such fateful 
consequences as that act of the unknown staff officer or 
courier who chose Lee's plan of battle as a wrapping 
for his tobacco. 



222 ROBERT E. LEE 

"If we always had exact information of our enemy's 
dispositions," said Frederick, "we should beat him 
every time." This exact information this strange 
mishap gave to Lee's adversary on the eve of Antie- 
tam. Even so, Lee, who fought the battle with only 
35,000 men, came off with more glory than his an- 
tagonist, who had 87,000,* as gallant men, moreover, 
as ever braved death, and the latter was a little later 
removed by his government as a failure, while Lee 
stood higher than ever in the affection and esteem of 
the South. Lee's plan was to march into Maryland to 
the west of Washington, and inclining to the north- 
eastward, threaten at once Baltimore and Washington, 
and incidentally Pennsylvania. His first objective was 
Hagerstown, Md., an important junction point due 
north of Harper's Ferry. It was expected that this 
line of march would naturally clear the Shenandoah 
Valley of the troops which had been harrying it. It 
had been supposed that as soon as this move was made 
the troops garrisoning Harper's Ferry, numbering some 
10,000 men, would be withdrawn, as Johnston had done 
when Patterson moved south in 1861. When the com- 
mander at Harper's Ferry still held on, it became neces- 
sary to dislodge or capture him. Lee decided on the | 
latter course and despatched Jackson to capture him, 
while he pushed on into Maryland. 

His disposition of his forces, which McClellan got 
information of on the 13th of September, was as follows: 

* General Lee told Fitz Lee that he fought the battle of Sharpsburg 
with 35,000 troops. And McClellan reported that he himself had 
87,164 troops. (Fitzhugh Lee's "Life of Lee," p. 209.) CJ. also 
Ropes's "Story of the Civil War," II, pjj. 376, 377. 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 223 

Jackson, whose troops formed the advance, was to turn 
off from the Hagerstown Road after passing Middle- 
town, take the Sharpsburg Road, cross the Potomac at 
the most convenient place, and by Friday night (Sep- 
tember 12) seize the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, 
round up and capture the troops at Martinsburg to the 
west of Harper's Ferry — some 3,000 men — and then 
proceed to capture Harper's Ferry itself. Longstreet 
was to proceed to Boonsboro, on the Hagerstown Road ; 
McLaws was to follow him to Middletown and then, fol- 
lowing Jackson, with his own and Anderson's Divisions 
was to seize the Maryland Heights, commanding Har- 
per's Ferry, by Friday night, and proceed to aid in the 
capture of Harper's Ferry. General Walker, with his 
division, was to seize Loudoun Heights on the south 
side of the Shenandoah River, and as far as practicable 
co-operate with Jackson and McLaws in intercepting 
the retreat of the enemy. General D. H. Hill's Division 
was to form the rear guard of the main army. Stuart 
was to send detachments of cavalry with these troops, 
and with the main body of his cavalry was to cover the 
route of the main army and bring up stragglers. After 
the capture of Harper's Ferry the troops engaged there 
were to join the main army. 

It will be seen that Lee had no doubt whatever of the 
success of his undertaking. Both he and Jackson knew 
Harper's Ferry and the surrounding country, and his 
plan, so simple and yet so complete, was laid out with a 
precision as absolute as if formed on the ground instead 
of on the march in a new country. It was this order 
showing the dispersion of his army over twenty-odd 



224 ROBERT E. LEE 

miles of country, with a river flowing between its widely 
scattered parts, that by a strange fate fell in McClellan's 
hands. 

Lee's order was discovered and delivered to McClel- 
lan on the 13th, and McClellan at once set himself to 
the task of meeting the situation by relieving Harper's 
Ferry on the one hand and crushing Lee's army in 
detail among the passes of the Maryland Spurs. Lee, 
however, had, through the good offices of a friendly 
citizen who had been present at or had learned of the 
delivery of his despatch to McClellan, soon become 
aware of the misfortune that had befallen him, and 
while McClellan was preparing to destroy him, he 
was taking prompt measures to repair the damage as 
fully as possible. He promptly informed his lieuten- 
ants and instantly recalled Longstreet from Hagers- 
town, ordered Hill back to Turner's Gap and Stuart 
to Crampton Gap, five miles south, to defend them 
against McClellan's expected advance, a disposition 
which delayed the enemy until the evening of the 14th, 
when, after fierce fighting, they carried both positions, 
forcing McLaws back from Crampton Gap to Pleasant 
Valley, across which, however, he established "a. formi- 
dable line of defence." Lee was thus forced to choose 
between two alternatives — either to retreat across the 
Potomac or to fight where he had not contemplated 
fighting. He seems to have wavered momentarily 
which course to adopt, and well he might waver. It 
was a perilous situation. He had with him, by the 
highest computation, when the gaps were stormed on 
the afternoon of the 14th, only about 19,000 men in 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 225 

all/ "while the main army of McClellan was close upon 
him." He issued an order that night (8 p. m.) to 
McLaws to cross the Potomac below Shepherdstown, 
leaving the ford at Shepherdstown for the main 
army to take. "But in less than two hours Lee 
had changed his mind — why we are not informed" 
—says Ropes, "and had determined to await battle 
north of the Potomac." By midnight he had planned 
his battle; he had ordered the cavalry to pilot McLaws 
over the mountains and across country to Sharps- 
burg, where he had determined to make his stand 
on the east of Antietam Creek. He had also taken 
measures to bring up his other troops as rapidly as 
possible. "This decision," says Ropes, "to stand and 
fight at Sharpsburg, which General Lee took on the 
evening of the 14th of September — just after his 
troops had been driven from the South Mountain 
passes — is beyond controversy one of the boldest and 
most hazardous decisions in his whole military career. 
It is, in truth, so bold and hazardous that one is be- 
wildered that he could even have thought seriously of 
making it." ^ 

Lee's decision was, indeed, so bold and hazardous 
that the thoughtful Ropes suggests that he must have 
been influenced by fear of loss of his military prestige. 
"General Lee, however," he admits, "thought there 
was a fair chance for him to win a victory over McClel- 
lan," ^ and he adds that "naturally he did not consider 
them [McClellan's troops] as good as his own, and it is 

' Ropes's "Story of the Civil War," II, p. 347. 

* Ibid., pp. 351, 352. * Ibid., II, p. 349. 



226 ROBERT E. LEE 

without doubt that theji did not constitute so good an 
army as that which he commanded." 

We have seen what his motives were on crossing over 
into Maryland. His design now was to cover McLaws's 
rear at Harper's Ferry, prevent the rehef of that place, 
draw his army together in a strong, defensive position, 
and await McClellan's attack. We ivnow, however, 
that while Longstreet (as usual) suggested the obstacles 
and dangers of the situation, Jackson approved the 
action of Lee both before and after the battle.* 

The eastern range of the Blue Ridge in Maryland 
follows the general trend of the Appalachians from 
south-west to north-east, and north of the Potomac 
are known as the South Mountains. To the westward 
lies a rolling country with pleasant valleys through 
which wind small streams which flow southward into 
the Potomac, Up these valleys and up the ridges 
which divide them wind the roads northward, which 
Lee was following when he learned of the mishap that 
had befallen him in the discovery of his plans. It was 
a perilous situation, for McClellan with 80,000 troops 
lay on the other side of the South Mountain at Fred- 
erick, within a day's march of his small force, and 
the passes were defended by only D. H. Hill's Divis- 
ion and the cavalry; while Longstreet was at Hagers- 
town, twelve miles beyond Boonsboro, and Jackson 
with Walker and McLaws was still engaged in the work 
of capturing Harper's Ferry, on the other side of the 
Potomac. The stoutest heart might well have quailed. 
But Lee stood firm. He knew both Jackson and 

' Lee's letter to Mrs. Jackson, January 15, 1866. 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 227 

McClellan, and he acted with undaunted resolution. 
Instead of retreating across the Potomac as Longstreet 
suggested, he ordered the passes of the South Mountain 
to be defended, recalled Longstreet to his aid, and re- 
tiring to a position on the Antietam, prepared for bat- 
tle with the Potomac at his back, while he awaited 
Jackson. Fortunately for Lee, his surmise based on 
McClellan's known caution proved correct. McClellan 
did not attack the troops posted in the passes until 
afternoon on the 14th, the day that Jackson invested 
Harper's Ferry, and then he threw the bulk of his 
force, 70,000 men, against the northernmost gap, and 
the one nearest Longstreet, so that by the time his 
attack became general — four o'clock — Longstreet had 
reached the field, and at nightfall Turner's Gap was 
still in Lee's possession. The Southern Gap, known 
as Crampton's Gap, defended by the gallant Mun- 
ford with only his cavalry, dismounted, and a regi- 
ment of infantry, had been carried at five o'clock by 
Franklin, and that night Franklin, established at the 
top of the mountain, might with reasonable assistance 
have commanded the direct line of communication be- 
tween Lee and Jackson. That night, however, Long- 
street and Hill abandoned Turner's Gap, their position 
being no longer tenable, and fell back to Sharps- 
burg above the Antietam, and Franklin was held at 
bay by McLaws's bold front and called for reinforce- 
ments though the latter had only six brigades in line, 
not over 6,000 men, to Franklin's 20,000.' The losses 
of the Confederates on this day were in all about 

» Allan, p. 364. 



228 ROBERT E. LEE 

3,400 men, while of the Federals they were probably 
a thousand less. Jackson, Walker, and McLaws had 
been ordered that afternoon by Lee to join him. Jack- 
son's reply was sent next day in the form of an an- 
nouncement that; ''through God's blessing, Harper's 
Ferry and its garrison were to be surrendered, " and 
that, leaving Hill, whose troops had borne the heaviest 
part in the engagement, in command, the other troops 
would march that evening, as soon as they could get 
their rations. 

It should be said that Jackson completely performed 
the part assigned to him, as did all who had gone with 
him. Circling Harper's Ferry, he rounded up the troops 
at Martinsburg, drove them into Harper's Ferry, 
which he had already invested on the north and east, 
and then, following them, proceeded to reduce the 
place with such success that on the morning of the 
15th, after a fierce bombardment, he had the satisfac- 
tion of seizing the town — the white flag being hoisted at 
the moment his infantry was forming for the assault. 
By this capture he took 12,500 men, 13,000 small arms, 
73 pieces of artillery, and some hundreds of wagons. 
Having accomplished this feat in accordance with 
Lee's plans, and waiting only to fill his men's haver- 
sacks, he set out to join Lee, lying in front of McClel- 
lan's army, which, as stated, had stormed and carried 
the gaps of the South Mountains in front of him the 
evening before. They marched all night, forded the 
Potomac and, while McClellan paltered and reconnoitred 
and waited to get his whole great army through the 
passes of the South Mountain, they limped on to the field 




The Field of the Antietam 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 229 

on the morning of the 16th Hke a weary pack after a 
kilhng chase and added 11,000 worn but victorious 
troops to the 15,000 or 16,000 men whom McClellan's 
imagination had magnified into a great army. Thir- 
teen thousand men of Lee's army were still at Harper's 
Ferry, and every hour of delay was precious for him. 

The passes of the South Mountain having been car- 
ried while Jackson was closing in on Harper's Ferry, 
twenty miles away. General Lee on the night of the 14th 
withdrew his army across Antietam Creek and assumed 
a position which he thought stronger, along a range of 
hills on the east side of the Hagerstown Turnpike, with 
his right resting on Antietam Creek and his left refused 
across the turnpike some three miles to the northward, 
this turnpike being a line of communication between 
the two wings by which he could support either when 
hard pressed. His position was a strong one for defence. 
The ridge on which he lay faced the Antietam lying in 
its deep ravine, and commanded the slopes in front, 
and all but one of the crossings of the creeks. He had 
no time for entrenchments, but his men were protected 
partly by stone walls or fences and partly by outcropping 
ledges of limestone and belts of forest. The right rested 
on a spur which lifted above the Antietam, the left on 
Nicodemus Run, near the Potomac, with a protecting 
wood just behind. The issue proved that the line had 
been chosen with a soldier's eye. Thus ensconced, he 
waited for Jackson, who on the morning of the same day 
(the 15th) had, as already stated, captured Harper's 
Ferry, with its garrison, munitions, and stores, and, 
leaving A. P. Hill in charge, set out in haste at night- 



230 ROBERT E. LEE 

fall to reinforce Lee, who was confronting McClellan. 
Happily for Lee, McClellan was still seeing shadows. 
He waited to make everything sure.' 

McClellan's army, with whom Lee's cavalry had been 
so effectively skirmishing as to retard the advance all 
the forenoon, appeared in his front in the early after- 
noon of the 15th, and Ropes declares that it was an 
''unique opportunity" that was offered the Union 
general. McClellan, however, as he had written Hal- 
leck on the night of the 13th, still believed that Lee 
had at least 100,000 men under his command, and he 
knew how ably that army, whatever its numbers, was 
commanded. Lee's very boldness was his salvation. 
Had he shown a less dauntless front McClellan would 
have destroyed him. As it was, McClellan could not 
imagine that with less than a sixth of the force which 
had swept him from the mountain passes, Lee would 
stand for battle with a river at his back. Moreover, 
he believed that his own army was still not fully recov- 
ered from the demoralization it had suffered from 
under Pope. The Army of the Potomac, he declared 
later, ''was thoroughly exhausted by the desperate 
fighting and severe marching in the unhealthy regions 
of the Chickahominy, and afterward during the second 
Bull Run campaign." He held that "nothing but 
sheer necessity justified the advance of the Army of 
the Potomac to South Mountain and Antietam in its 
then condition." ^ His idea was, as he has written, to 
force Lee back across the Potomac, but not to risk losing 

» Ropes, II, pp. 354, 355. 

2 "Battles and Leaders," II, p. 564. 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 231 

a battle which, lost, might lose Washington. He was, 
therefore, more than ordinarily inclined to be cautious. 
Accordingly, although his army was now spread out on 
the slopes above the left bank of the Antietam in full 
view of Lee, and his artillery engaged in a brief duel 
with Lee's guns posted above the right bank, it was 
not until next day (the 16th) that he made any demon- 
strations against Lee. Meantime Jackson was pushing 
forward all that night, and on the morning of the 16th 
he arrived with all of his army who could march, the 
remainder of them, barefooted and lame, being left 
behind. But these, alike with those who could march, 
were flushed with victory. 

McClellan now proposed, if possible, to destroy Lee, 
Lee proposed to receive McClellan's assault, and, if 
opportunity presented itself, to deal him at the right 
moment a counterstroke which should destroy him. 
McClellan had by his report 87,000 men and 275 guns 
on the field; Lee had less than 36,000 after his last 
regiment arrived. 

Lee's troops were posted, with Longstreet command- 
ing his right and centre and Jackson his left, with 
Hood in support, his cavalry guarding the wings, 
while McClellan, in disposing his forces, had placed 
Hooker on his extreme right with the First Corps, 
Sunrner next on his right with two corps, the Second 
and Twelfth, then Porter with the Fifth Corps occu- 
pying his centre, and Burnside on the left with the 
Ninth Corps, all good troops and bravely led. That 
afternoon, in pursuance of McClellan's plan, Hooker was 
ordered to cross the Antietam and assault Lee's left, 



232 ROBERT E. LEE 

and crossing the stream his corps assaulted the portion 
of the hne held by Hood, but was "gallantly repulsed." 
The only effect of this assault is declared by Ropes to 
have been the disclosure of McClellan's plans.* It at least 
informed Lee where to look for the attack next day. 
That night Mansfield, with the Twelfth Corps, followed 
Hooker across the Antietam and waited for dawn. 

The real battle of Sharpsburg was fought on the 
17th, and was the bloodiest battle of the war, a battle 
in which intrepid courage marked both sides, shining 
alike in the furious charges of the men who assaulted 
Lee's lines and the undaunted constancy of the men 
who defended them. It began early in the morning, 
as expected, with an attack by Hooker's corps, under 
such gallant conamanders as Meade, Doubleday, and 
Ricketts;the first shock falling on Ewell's Division in 
Jackson's wing, and within the deadly hour of the first 
onslaught. General J. R. Jones, commanding Jackson's 
old division, was borne from the field, to be followed 
immediately by Starke, v/ho succeeded him in com- 
mand, mortally wounded ; Colonel Douglass, command- 
ing Lawton's Brigade, was killed; General Lawton, 
commanding a division, and Colonel Walker, com- 
manding a brigade, were severely wounded. More 
than half of the brigades of Lawton and Hays were 
either killed or wounded, and more than a third of 
Trimble's, and all of the regimental commanders in 
those brigades, except two, were killed or wounded.^ 
''The corn in a field of thirty acres was cut as close 

' Ropes, II, pp. 358, 359. 

^ Ibid., II, p. 359, citing Jackson's report, 27, W. R., p. 956. 



i 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 233 

as if cut by the sickle, and the dead lay piled in 
regular ranks along the whole Confederate front." In 
this extremity. Hood's Brigades and three of D. H. 
Hill's Brigades were rushed to the front in support of 
the exhausted divisions of Jones and Lawton, and 
after an hour of furious fighting, Hooker's force, led 
by himself with Doubleday, Ricketts, and Meade, 
gallant commanders of gallant divisions, were beaten 
off, with Hooker himself wounded and over 2,500 
men dead or wounded. It was a terrific opening of a 
terrific day. As they retired, Mansfield's corps, 8,500 
muskets, came in on their left, and in the furious on- 
slaught on the already shattered brigades of D. H. 
Hill and Hood, bore them back across the turnpike, 
''with loss of some 1,700 men out of the 7,000 brought 
into action," and an even heavier loss on the Con- 
federate side. But beyond the turnpike the remnants 
of Jones's Division under Grigsby, reinforced by Early, 
who had succeeded the wounded Lawton in command of 
Swell's Division, "clung obstinately" to their ground,^ 
and Stuart's Artillery shattered the charging lines. Lee 
knew the work before him and recognized the need of 
holding back at all hazards these assaulting columns. 
From his post on an eminence near his centre his eagle 
eye had seen the crux of the fight, and while McClellan's 
columns were spread beyond the Antietam opposite his 
right and centre, he despatched McLaws and Walker 
from his right to aid their old comrades. So far Lee's 
left had suffered terribly, and only the supreme cour- 
age of the men — rank and file — had saved Lee's army. 

' Ropes, II, pp. 361, 362. 



234 ROBERT E. LEE 

Along the left so thin was the line that Stuart, always 
resourceful, had employed the expedient of posting 
standards at intervals behind the ridge, so that they 
could be seen above the crest, and gathering up the 
stragglers, he formed them into a body of sharp-shooters, 
and, taking personal command himself, led them for- 
ward, transforming them frDm a lot of shirkers into a 
band of heroes/ It was at this point that Lee was 
approached by a captain of artillery, who, having had 
three of his four guns disabled, asked for instructions, 
and having told him to take his other gun in, found 
that his own son was one of the gunners. 

A brief lull now took place, which was broken by 
the advance of Sumner, with two divisions, 18,000 
men, pushing hotly across the turnpike in three lines 
against the Confederate left, his veteran troops cheer- 
ing and being cheered, confident of sweeping ever}'- 
thing before them. It was a perilous moment, for 
Hill and Hood and Early had been terribly shattered, 
however "obstinately they clung to their ground," and 
Sedgwick's and Richardson's troops were fresh and 
game. Beyond the turnpike, however, they came on 
the remnants of Jackson's Divisions, lying behind a 
rocky ledge, who gave them a staggering reception. 
And at this moment the divisions of McLaws and 
Walker, who had been sent by Lee from his right, 
came up, and, under Jackson's orders, who rode him- 
self to meet McLaws and direct him to attack and 
turn the enemy's flank, they deployed across Sumner's 
and Sedgwick's flank and poured forth on them a 

'"Story of a Cannoneer I'^nder Stonewall Jackson," p. 151. 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 235 

^ fire so ''terrible and sustained" that, after a futile 
. effort to change front, the Federals broke and fell 
back in confusion under the shelter of their artil- 
lery, with a loss of over 2,200, officers and men, all 
, within a few minutes/ It was the crucial point of 
„ the battle. Had Sumner been able to sweep over 
Jackson's exhausted divisions, Lee's army would have 
. been destroyed. They had already given back under 
; the terrific onslaught of superior numbers and arms, 
r and a gap had been made in Jackson's line when the 
, reinforcements arrived. "God has been very kind to 
us this day," said Stonewall Jackson, as he rode with 
McLaws on the heels of his victorious soldiery, who 
tfj were sweeping Sedgwick from the ridge they had gained 
yat such cost. 

[j This act of Lee in reinforcing his left wing from 

Ijhis right at this critical juncture. Ropes praises as 

:i exhibiting remarkable ''skill and resolution." An ef- 

,jfort made to press Sedgwick's defeated troops, who 

reformed behind their artillery, was repulsed by the 

,1 artillery and Smith's brigade, which had just come 

i up and saved Sedgwick; but not until thirty-nine and 

||one-half per cent of McLaws's Division had fallen. A 

.jlittle later the remnants of Jones's and Lawton's 

I troops drove the enemy from the ground they had 

secured in the second assault. But by this time all the 

^Confederate troops in that part of the field had sus- 

lltained terrific losses. Says Henderson, from whom 

! and Ropes much of this account is taken: "30,500 in- 

r; 'Henderson, II, p. 252, citing Palfrey, "The Antietam and Frede- 
jricksburg," p. 87. 



236 ROBERT E. LEE 

fantry at the lowest calculation, and probably 100 guns, 
besides those across the Antietam — eight divisions of 
infantry, more than half of McClellan's army — lay 
paralyzed before them for the rest of the day." * Nearly 
13,000 men, including no less than fifteen generals and 
brigadiers, had fallen within six hours. "They had, 
indeed," says Ropes, "with the utmost bravery, with 
inflexible resolution, and at a terrible sacrifice of life, 
repelled the third attack on the left flank of the Con- 
federate army." ^ Meantime, Sumner's other division, 
under French, which was put in to reinforce Sedgwick, 
had by bearing southward been engaged in a bloody and 
desperate conflict, on Lee's left centre, with the divis- 
ions of D. H. Hill and R. H. Anderson, the latter 
of whom, on his way to reinforce the left wing, find- 
ing Hill's already decimated brigades hard pressed, 
had turned aside to their succor. They were now in 
a desperate struggle with these 10,000 fresh troops, 
under French and Richardson, who tried again and 
again to secure the strong central point marked by 
the Dunkard Church. The combat which followed 
"was," says Ropes, "beyond a question one of the 
most sanguinary and desperate in the whole war. 
The Confederate artillery was hammered almost out] 
of existence; the wood next the Dunkard Churchj 
was carried, and still Longstreet's infantry held theiij 
ground, recapturing the wood. For three hours, hovc^ 
ten till one, the conflict raged over the famous sunkei 
road before the Federals secured possession of it, anc 

» " Life of stonewall Jackson," pp. 254, 255. 

^ Ropes, II, p. 367. =• Ibid., II, p. 368. 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 237 

"Bloody Lane" is the name to-day by which is known 
this roadway whose possession that day cost over 6,000 
men. ''At this moment/' says the same high authority 
whose account we have been following, ''fortune favored 
McClellan. The two divisions of Franklin's corps, under 
W. F. Smith and Slocum, had arrived on this part of 
the field." They numbered from 10,000 to 12,000 men, 
fresh and in good condition. 

Franklin wished to put them in, but Sumner, who 
had tested the temper of the men who held Lee's line, 
was unwilling to risk another attack, and "McClellan, 
undoubtedly much influenced by Sumner, would not 
permit any attack." "Even Sumner, bravest of men," 
says Henderson, "had been staggered by the fierce 
assault which had driven Sedgwick's troops like sheep 
across the corn-field, nor was McClellan disposed to push 
matters to extremity." ^ 

The battle was now raging along the front of Lee's 

right, protected by the Antietam. About 1 p. m. the 

bridge was carried by Burnside's troops, and the stream 

was crossed both above and below, but not until four 

assaults had been repelled by Tombs's Brigade, of D. R. 

Jones's Division, assisted by the well-posted artillery. 

About three o'clock Cox made his assault on the heights 

where lay Lee's right, and achieved "a brilliant success," 

seizing the spur, breaking the infantry line, and captur- 

I ing Mcintosh's battery; and, says Ropes, "a complete 

I victory seemed within sight. But this was not to be." 

I Just at the crucial moment the Confederate "light 

I division" — five brigades under A. P. Hill — pushing 

i ' "Life of Stonewall Jackson," II, pp. 255, 256. 



238 ROBERT E. LEE 

from Harper's Ferry for the sound of the guns, having 
marched seventeen miles and forded the Potomac, 
''chmbed the heights south of the town," and "with- 
out an instant's hesitation they rushed to the rescue 
of their comrades," and the end was not long in com- 
ing. The lines were recaptured along with Mcintosh's 
battery, and the Federal troops, with victory appar- 
ently almost in their grasp, were driven back with 
terrific slaughter. When night fell, 28,000 men lay on 
the field, the proof of the constancy of the Ameri- 
can soldier. When night fell, Lee's army, decimated 
but intact, still held its position above the Antietam. 
"The failure to put Franklin in" was, in the opinion 
of Ropes, a capital error. He insists that McClellan 
should have won the battle; for unlike those who 
argue only from subsequent events, this thoughtful 
student of war admits that while "Lee's invasion had 
terminated in failure," he and his army had unques- 
tionably won glory, even though he claims that the 
prestige of victory rested later with McClellan.^ Thus 
ended what is said to have been the bloodiest day 
of the war, and one of the bloodiest battles ever fought. 
Each side lost about one-quarter of the troops engaged, 
and Lee had with less than half the force of his enemy, 
though compelled to fight in a place where he had 
not intended to fight, beaten his brave enemy off 
with such slaughter that though he offered him battle 
next day he was not again attacked, and the following 
morning he retired across the Potomac unmolested. 
Of "his intrepidity" in standing to fight an army, 

^ Ropes's "Story of the Civil War," II, p. 379. 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 239 

which Ropes places at 70,000, with less than 40,000 
men, not all of whom in fact were with him at the 
commencement of the action, Ropes has nothing but 
praise. ''Nor could any troops," he adds, ''have more 
fully justified the reliance their leader placed in them 
than the troops of the Army of Northern Virginia." ^ 
"Lee, in fact, intended to try his men again." Both 
Longstreet and Jackson urged recrossing the Potomac 
that night, but he refused. 

''As the men," says Henderson, "sank down to rest 
on the line of battle, so exhausted that they could not 
be awakened to eat their rations; as the blood cooled 
and the tension on the nerves relaxed, and even the 
officers, faint with hunger and sickened with the awful 
slaughter, looked forward with apprehension to the 
morrow, from one indomitable heart the hope of vic- 
tory had not yet vanished. In the deep silence of the 
night, more oppressive than the stunning roar of battle, 
Lee, still mounted, stood on the high-road to the Poto- 
mac, and as general after general rode in Yveavily from 
the front, he asked quietly of each, ' How is it on your 
part of the line?' Each told the same tale: their men 
were worn out; the enemy's numbers were over- 
whelming; there was nothing left but to retreat across 
the Potomac before daylight. Even Jackson had no 
other counsel to offer. His report was not the less im- 
pressive for his quiet and respectful tone. He had had 
to contend, he said, against the heaviest odds he had 
ever. met. Many of his divisional and brigade com- 
manders were dead or wounded, and his loss had been 
severe. Hood, who came next, was quite unmanned. 

' Ibid., II, p. 377. 



240 ROBERT E. LEE 

He exclaimed that he had no men left. 'Great God!' 
cried Lee, with an excitement he had not yet displayed, 
' where is the splendid division you had this morning? ' 
'They are lying on the field, where you sent them,' was 
the reply, 'for few have straggled. My division has 
been almost wiped out.' 

"After all had given their opinion, there was an appall- 
ing silence, which seemed to last for several minutes, 
and then General Lee, rising erect in his stirrups, said : 
'Gentlemen, we will not cross the Potomac to-night. 
You will go to your respective commands, strengthen 
your lines; send two officers from each brigade toward 
the ford to collect your stragglers and get them up. 
Many have come in. I have had the proper steps taken 
to collect all the men who are in the rear. If McClellan 
wants to fight in the morning, I will give him battle 
again. Go!' Without a word of remonstrance the 
group broke up, leaving their great commander alone 
with his responsibility, and, says an eye-witness, 'if 
I read their faces aright, there was not one but con- 
sidered that General Lee was taking a fearful risk.'" ^ 
All the next day he watched for this chance as the 
eagle watches from his crag for the prey; but it did not 
come and he recrossed into Virginia. He even looked 
forward to assuming the offensive. McClellan's left 
wing, protected by the Antietam and strongly posted 
beyond, was impregnable with any force he could bring 
to bear, but his right was not so well protected, and Lee 
now planned to attack and turn McClellan's right, 
and Jackson was to make the attempt to crush this 

* Henderson, II, p. 2G2, 263, quoting General Stephen D. Lee, wlio was 
present at the conference. 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 241 

wing, for which purpose he was to be given fifty guns, 
drawn from his own and other commands. As Stuart, 
however, had reported against the attempt the evening 
before, so now Jackson, having personally inspected 
the position in company with Colonel Stephen D. Lee, 
reported that it was impossible with any force he 
could bring to the attack/ 

Of the battle of Sharpsburg, or Antietam, the view 
usually expressed is one largely influenced by events 
which succeeded it after a long interval. The view at 
the time, based on the actual battle and its immediate 
consequences, was widely different. The North was 
full of dejection rather than of elation, and General 
G. H. Gordon, who now commanded a division, wrote : 
"It would be useless to deny that at this period there 
was a despondent feeling in the army." General Mc- 
Clellan wrote that the States of the North are flooded 
with deserters and absentees.^ Horace Greeley's paper, 
representing the great constituency which at that time 
opposed Lincoln's methods, voiced their opinion. ''He 
leaves us," he declared, speaking of Lee, ''the debris 
of his late camp, two disabled pieces of artillery, a 
few hundred of his stragglers, perhaps 2,000 of his 
wounded, and as many more of his unburied dead. 
Not a sound field-piece, caisson, ambulance, or wagon ; 
not a tent, box of stores, or a pound of ammunition. 
He takes with him the supplies gathered in Mary- 
land and the rich spoils of Harper's Ferry." ^ 



' Ibid., II, p. 266, citing General S. D. Lee's account. 

'Off. Rep., vol. XIX, part I, p. 70. 

^New York Tribune. Quoted from Jones's "Lee," p. 195. 



242 ROBERT E. LEE 

Wliat those rich spoils were Lee himself mentions 
in the general order issued to his army, two weeks after 
it had, on the field of Sharpsburg, as he declares, with 
less than one-third of the enemy's numbers, resisted 
from daylight until dark the whole army of the enemy, 
and repulsed every attack along his entire front of 
more than four miles in extent. 

In this order the commanding general recounts to 
his army its achievements, in reviewing which he de- 
clares he ''cannot withhold the expression of his ad- 
miration of the indomitable courage it has displayed 
in battle, and its cheerful endurance of privation and 
hardship on the march." ^ 

If an exultant note of pardonable pride in his army 
creeps into it, who can wonder! ''Since your great 
victories around Richmond," he declares, "you have 
defeated the enemy at Cedar IMountain, expelled him 
from the Rappahannock, and, after a conflict of three 
days, utterly repulsed him on the plain of Manassas, 
and forced him to take shelter within the fortifications 
around his capital. Without halting for repose, you 
crossed the Potomac, stormed the heights of Harper's 
Ferry, made prisoners of more than 11,600 men and 
.captured upward of 70 pieces of artillery, all ©f their 
small arms, and other rhunitions of war. Wliile one 
corps of the army was thus engaged, another insured 
its success by arresting at Boonsboro the combined 
armies of the enemy, advancing under their favorite 
general to the relief of their beleaguered comrades. 

"On the field of Sharpsburg, with less than one- 

' General Orders, No. 116. 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 243 

third of his numbers, you resisted from dayhght till 
dark the whole army of the enemy, and repulsed every 
attack along his entire front of more than four miles 
in extent. 

''The whole of the following day you stood prepared 
to resume the conflict on the same ground, and retired 
next morning without molestation across the Potomac. 

''Two attempts subsequently made by the enemy 
to follow you across the river have resulted in his eom- 
plete discomfiture and his being driven back with 
loss." 

Such was the view that the commanding general, 
Lee himself, took of his campaign two weeks after the 
battle of Antietam, and it is no wonder that he should 
have added: "Achievements such as these demanded 
much valor and patriotism. History records few ex- 
amples of greater fortitude and endurance than this 
army has exhibited; " or that he should, as he reports, 
have "been commissioned by the President to thank 
the army in the name of the Confederate States for 
the undying fame they had won for their arms." 

In truth, whatever long subsequent events may have 
developed as to the consequences of the attack at 
Sharpsburg and Lee's retirement across the Potomac 
afterward, to the student of war, now as then, it must 
appear that the honors of that bloodiest battle of the 
war were with Lee, and remain with him to-day. That 
McClellan, with the complete disposition of Lee's forces 
in his hand, with an army of 87,000 men as brave as 
ever died for glory, and as gallantly officered, should 
not have destroyed Lee with but 35,000 in the total on 



244 ROBERT E. LEE 

the field, and that Lee, with but that number up, 
while the rest, shoeless and lame, were limping far be- 
hind, yet trying to get up, should, with his back to the 
river, have not only survived that furious day, repuls- 
ing every attack along that deadly four-mile front, 
but should have stood his ground to offer battle again 
next day, and then have retired across the river un- 
molested, is proof beyond all doubt/ 

"Why do you not move that line of battle to make 
it conform to your own?" asked Hunter McGuire of 
Grigsby, gazing at a long line of men lying quietly in 
ranks in a field at some little distance. 

"Those men are all dead," was the reply; "they are 
Georgia soliders." ^ 

A Federal patrol that night, crossing a field where 
the fight had raged fiercest, came on a battle-line asleep, 
rank on rank, skirmishers in front and battle-line be- 
hind, all asleep on their arms. They were all dead. 

It has been thought well to discuss somewhat at 
lengtli this great battle fought by Lee on Northern soil, 
because it seems to illustrate peculiarly those qualities 
which, in combination, made him the great captain 
he was, and absolutely refutes the foolish charge that 
he was only a defensive general and remarkable only 
when behind breastworks. At Antietam there were 
no breastworks save the limestone ledges, the fences, 
and the sunken roads cut by the rains and worn by 
the wagons. It exhibits absolutely his grasp of the 



* The Union losses were 12,400; Confederate, 8,000. 

* Address on Stonewall Jackson, by Dr. Hunter McGuire, " The Con- 
federate Cause," p. 204. 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 245 

most difficult and unexpected situation, his unequalled 
audacity, his intrepidity, his resourcefulness, his in- 
comparable resolution, and his skill in handling men 
alike in detached sections and in mass on the field of 
battle. Possibly, no other general on either side would 
have had the boldness to risk the stand Lee made in 
the angle of the Antietam, with the Potomac at his 
back; certainly no other general save Grant would have 
stood his ground after the battle, and have saved the 
morale of his army, and as to Grant, it is merely con- 
jecture; for he fought no battle south of the Rapidan 
in which he did not largely outnumber his antagonist 
and vastly excel him in equipment. 

It is true, as Ropes states, that McClellan fol- 
lowed Lee across the Potomac, but his two immedi- 
ate attempts were promptly repelled. When McClellan 
found that Lee had recrossed the Potomac, he con- 
ceived a different idea of the situation from that he 
had had with Lee lying in his front with refilled car- 
tridge boxes and ammunition chests. He decided to 
advance, and proceeded on the afternoon of the 19th 
to cross the river in pursuit. This movement he in- 
trusted to Porter. Lee was now withdrawing to a 
region where he could rest and subsist his troops, and 
the ford at which the army had crossed was guarded 
by only a small rear guard of some 600 infantry, sup- 
ported by the reserve artillery under General W. N. 
Pendleton. Crossing over under cover of a heavy 
artillery fire, Porter attacked the rear guard, which, 
owing to the necessity to guard threatened points above 
and below the ford, had been reduced to about 200 



246 ROBERT E. LEE 

men, and captured four guns. McClellan then ordered 
Porter to move across in force, confident that lie would 
catch Lee in retreat and disable him. Porter acted 
with decision. Lee appears to have gauged well the 
strength of the pursuit. Wlien he received notice of 
the affair of the 19th from General Pendleton, he or- 
dered Jackson to ''drive back those people," and Jack- 
son, who had already been apprised of the situation, 
acted promptly. With Hill leading, and Early in sup- 
port, he turned on the force that was advancing under 
Sykes and Morell, and with an impetuous charge drove 
it back across the river, dyeing the stream with the 
blood of many a brave man, and entailing upon Por- 
ter's gallant corps a loss which satisfied the commander 
that though the Army of Virginia had retired from the 
banks of the Antietam, the idea that it was in retreat 
had not found a lodgement on the south bank of the 
Potomac. This was the end of McClellan's serious 
attempt to follow up the '^ victory" of Antietam. It 
was not until more than a month later, when Lee lay 
about Winchester, that McClellan made good a foot- 
ing in Virginia. During this time, McClellan not hav- 
ing crossed the Potomac, Lee sent Stuart across the 
river on one of his famous around-the-enemy rides. 
Crossing the Potomac at daylight on the 10th of Oc- 
tober, Stuart with 1,800 men rode due north to Mer- 
cersburg, thence on to Chambersburg, forty-six miles 
from his starting-point, in Virginia, which he reached 
at seven o'clock that evening. Here he destroyed 
the depot of supplies, including a large quantity of 
small arms and ammunition, and making a requi- 



ANTIETAM AND CHANCELLORSVILLE 247 

sition for some 500 horses, he set out around the 
rear of McClellan's army. Crossing the mountains, he 
passed through Summitsburg, crossed the Monocacy 
near Frederick, and reached Hyattstown at dayUght 
on the 12th. Learning that 4,000 or 5,000 troops 
were guarding the roads, he took a by-road, and pass- 
ing within a mile or two of the enemy near Pottersville, 
he seized the ford known as White's Ford, and, after a 
sharp skirmish, crossed back into Virginia, having rid- 
den one hundred and twenty-six miles from daylight 
on the 10th to noon on the 12th, and passed close by 
McClellan's army lying in wait to catch him, and all 
without the loss of a single man killed. 

This brilliant action of Stuart's had a far-reaching 
effect. It was the second time the daring cavalry 
leader had ridden around McClellan, and the people of 
the North were so excited by it that McClellan was 
forced to move southward. In the end, indeed, it 
brought about his removal. 

"Though badly found in weapons, ammunition, mil- 
itary equipment, etc.," says Field-Marshal Viscount 
Wolseley, in speaking of Lee at this time, "his army 
had, nevertheless, achieved great things. His men 
were so badly shod (indeed, a considerable portion had 
no boots or shoes) that, at the battle of Antietam, Gen- 
eral Lee assured me he never had more than 35,000 
men with him; the remainder of his army, shoeless and 
footsore, were straggling along the roads in the rear, 
trying to reach him in time for the battle." Henderson 
declares that the discovery of Lee's despatch was the 
cause of the failure of his invasion of Maryland. But 



248 ROBERT E. LEE* 

for this he might have selected his own battle-field, 
there need have been no forced marches, and the 
25,000 stragglers who had been left beyond the Potomac 
would have been in the fighting line. 

Had Lee been in McClellan's place, who can doubt 
what the issue would have been? In fact, Mr. Lincoln 
plainly put this question to McClellan in another con- 
nection, and a little later relieved him of conmiand 
and put the brave but hesitating Burnside in his place, 
only to add, a few weeks later on the fatal field of 
Fredericksburg, new laurels to Lee's chaplet. 



CHAPTER X 

FREDERICKSBURG 

Toward the end of October, McClellan began to cross 
the Potomac with a view to moving through the Pied- 
mont and thus forcing Lee from the Shenandoah Val- 
ley. He had learned a lesson in strategy from his 
able opponent. He brought into the Piedmont about 
125,000 men and 320 guns, while Lee had in all about 
72,000 men and 275 guns, of which 127 were smooth- 
bore, short-range pieces. Lee still pursued his old 
plan of threatening the enemy's communications. He 
left Jackson with the Second Corps about Winchester, 
while Longstreet with the First Corps was to bar Mc- 
Clellan's way to the southward and fall on his com- 
munications should he turn to the Valley. He had no 
fear of McClellan's marching on Richmond before him, 
and he chose the plan which with his smaller force was 
the only one that promised assured success. He had 
at first decided to bring Jackson south of the Blue 
Ridge to unite with Longstreet by means of Fisher's 
Gap, and from the region about Gordonsville threaten 
McClellan's communications; but he inlmediately af- 
terward changed his plan (at Jackson's suggestion, 
Henderson thinks) and left Jackson in "the Valley" to 
operate in the way he knew so well, while he himself 
remained in McClellan's front, awaiting his oppor- 
tunity. His letter of November 9 to Jackson, setting 

249 



250 ROBERT E. LEE 

forth his plan, casts a light on his character, and on 
his relation to his great lieutenant. It runs as follows:* 

Head-quarters Army of Northern Virginia, 

November 9, 1862—1 p. m. 
Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Jackson, 
Commanding Left Wing, etc. 

General: Your letter of the 7th is at hand. The 
enemy seems to be massing his troops along the Ma- 
nassas Railroad in the vicinity of Piedmont, which gives 
him great facilities for bringing up supplies from Alex- 
andria. It has occurred to me that his object may be 
to seize upon Strasburg with his main force, to inter- 
cept your ascent of the valley. This would oblige you 
to cross into the Lost River Valley, or west of it, un- 
less you could force a passage through the Blue Ridge; 
hence my anxiety for your safety. If you can prevent 
such a movement of the enemy, and operate strongly 
upon his flank and rear through the gaps of the Blue 
Ridge, you would certainly, in my opinion, effect the 
object you propose. A demonstration of crossing into 
Maryland would serve the same purpose, and might 
call him back to the Potomac. As my object is to re- 
tard and baffle his designs, if it can be accomplished by 
manoeuvring your corps as you propose, it will serve 
my purpose as well as if effected in any other way. 
With this understanding, you can use youv discretion, 
which I know I can rely upon, in remaining or advan- 
cing up the valley. But I desire you will take precau- 
tions to prevent the enemy's occupying the roads west 
of the Massanutten Mountains, and your demonstra- 
tion upon his flank might probably be as well made 
from a position nearer to Strasburg as from that you 
now occupy. If the enemy should move into the val- 

' War Records, series I, vol. XIX, part II, p. 705. 



FREDERICKSBURG 251 

ley through Thornton's Gap, you must seize the pass 
through the Massanutten Mountains as soon as you 
can, while Longstreet will advance through Milman's, 
which you term Fisher's Gap (on the direct road from 
Madison Court House to New Market). But I think 
his movement upon Front Royal the more probable 
of the two. 

Keep me advised of your movements and intentions; 
and you must keep always in view the probability of 
an attack upon Richmond, from either north or south, 
when a concentration of forces will become necessary. 
The enemy has made no advance south of the Rappa- 
hannock line since I last wi'ote you. . . . 

The non-occupation of Martinsburg by the enemy, 
and his not marching into the valley from his former 
base on the Potomac, shows, I think, that his whole 
force has been drawn from Maryland into Virginia east 
of the Blue Ridge. His retirement from Snicker's and 
Ashby's Gaps, and concentration of his force on the 
railroad in the vicinity of Manassas Gap, must either 
be for the purpose of supplying it or for making a de- 
scent upon Front Royal and Strasburg. I hope, there- 
fore, you will be on your guard. 

I am, etc., 

R. E. Lee, General. 

Meantime, McClellan's methods were rapidly alien- 
ating anew the confidence of both the government and 
the people of the United States. McClellan felt that he 
had saved Washington and the nation; the government 
felt that he should have destroyed Lee's army. The 
government complained of McClellan 's want of celerity; 
McClellan complained of Halleck's fault-finding. He 
wrote urging the government to say something in com- 
mendation of his army, which had been ''badly cut 



252 ROBERT E. LEE 

up and scattered by the overwhelming numbers brought 
against them in the battle of the 17th." The reply was 
a complaint of the army's "inactivity." 

Finally, the breach became so wide as to place its 
closing beyond possibility. When Lee retired across 
the Potomac, Mr. Lincoln, as a war measure, gave 
notice of his intention to issue an emancipation proc- 
lamation. This, though it eventually had an immense 
influence on the result of the struggle, was at the 
time contrary to the views of many, both out of the 
armies of the Union and in them, and was sharply, if 
indirectly, criticised by McClellan.^ 

In the early days of November, McCIellan advanced 
on Warrenton, and Lee, in anticipation of this, moved 
down to the east of the Blue Ridge and occupied Cul- 
peper and the region south of the Rappahannock, 
whereupon, after a tart correspondence between McCIel- 
lan and the authorities in Washington over McClellan's 
failure to destroy Lee's army, McCIellan was relieved 
of his command, the order issuing on the 5th of 
November. At the same time — indeed, by the same 
order — the gallant Fitz John Porter was ordered 
before a court-martial to answer charges preferred 
against him by Pope, that he had lost him the battle 
of Second Manassas. Thus was lost the service of 
''probably the best officer in the Army of the Poto- 
mac," ^ and thus the North lost the services of the 
general whom General Lee is said to have considered 

> Rhodes's " Hist, of U. S.," IV, p. 191. Henderson's " Stonewall 
Jackson," pp, 289. 
2 Ibid., II, p. 300. 






FREDERICKSBURG 253 

the best commander opposed to him during the war. 
That McClellan was not Lee's equal, either as a strat- 
egist, a tactician, or a fighter, was clearly manifest then 
as it is now; but he was a great organizer, conducted 
war on high principles, restored the morale of a shat- 
tered army, and defeated the object of Lee's first inva- 
sion of Maryland. And, as has been already quoted, it 
was well said that "without McClellan there could have 
been no Grant." 

Two days before Lee's letter to Jackson was de- 
spatched, and on the very day that Lee decided to 
concentrate his forces, the plan of the campaign from 
the North was unexpectedly revolutionized. That day 
Burnside rode into McClellan's camp with an order su- 
perseding McClellan and appointing himself in com- 
mand of the army. Politics had joined hands with 
impatience, and the most experienced general of the 
North was set aside for one who had so far com- 
manded only a corps and doubted his own ability to 
do more.^ What McClellan might have achieved had 
he been left untrammelled, as Grant was later, will 
never be known, any more than it will be known what 
Joseph E. Johnston might have accomplished had he 
not been superseded by the gallant but rash Hood 
before Sherman. But he could hardly have done worse 
than Burnside did. For the latter completely failed, 
and his failure led to a sacrifice of life as terrible as it 
was useless. 

The new commander absolutely changed the plan 
which McClellan had laid down. Turning southward, 

' Ropes, II, pp. 441, 442." Rhodes's "Hist, of U. S.,"IV, pp. 190, 191. 
Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson," II, pp. 299, 300. 



254 ROBERT E. LEE 

he led his army straight for Richmond. It sounded 
well, but was more difficult of accomplishment. Leav- 
ing Warrenton on the 15th of November, in two days 
Burnside's advance guard was on the heights opposite 
Fredericksburg. Had he pushed forward he might 
have seized the town and the heights behind it, and this 
Sumner urged his doing; but he feared to divide his 
army, and two days later Lee, who had previously ad- 
vised, though he had not ordered, Jackson's withdrawal 
toward Richmond, ordered Longstreet to take positioil 
there, and called Jackson from the valley to Orange 
Court House on the way to join him. "One hardly 
knows," says Ropes, ''which is more remarkable. Gen- 
eral Lee's sagacity in estimating the inertia of his an- 
tagonist or his temerity in confronting him so long with 
a force only one-third as strong, and actually for a time 
refusing the aid which Jackson was bringing to him." * 
Burnside, having made it thus manifest that he 
designed to cross the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg, 
Lee now moved down from Culpeper and Orange, on 
the upper waters of the Rappahannock, and posting 
himself on the heights on the southern side of the town, 
fortified and awaited Burnside's further advance. The 
fortifications for the artillery were made under the 
supintendence of General Lee's chief of artillery, Gen- 
eral William N. Pendleton, and were much commended; 
at least they served. The question that had presented 
itself on Burnside's advance was whether Lee should 
take position at Fredericksburg or on the south shore 
of the North Anna. It appears that Lee and his lieu- 
tenants preferred the latter line of defence as present- 

• Ropes, II, p. 454. 



FREDERICKSBURG 255 

ing a better chance for a counterstroke ; but the Con- 
federate authorities insisted on the former. And Lee, 
always dutiful, proceeded to secure this line. To 
allow the enemy to approach so near Richmond un- 
opposed, appeared to the government bad policy, and 
the valley of the Rappahannock and the other regions 
which would be given up were too valuable to be sac- 
rificed without a struggle. Leaving Winchester on the 
22d, Jackson marched down the valley, and crossing 
the Blue Ridge at Fisher's Gap, reached Orange Court 
House on the 27th, thirty-six miles from Fredericks- 
burg, having marched meantime one hundred and 
twenty miles and rested his army two days. Burn- 
side was still on the north side of the Rappahannock, 
getting his new line of communications and base of 
supplies established; the roads were growing worse 
and worse and the North more and more impatient. 

Thus Lee in mid-December found himself posted on 
the heights of Fredericksburg to bar Burnside's way. 

Fredericksburg lies on the plain on the west bank of 
the Rappahannock, where it is perhaps one hundred 
and fifty yards wide. The heights on this side begin 
on the river above the town and, curving around to 
the southward, continue in a range of hills parallel to 
the river at a distance of about a mile from the stream. 
The heights on the northern bank rose immediately 
above tRe water and were crowned by Burnside's pow- 
erful batteries. Burnside's forces, as given by him- 
self, numbered 113,000, while Lee's total strength 
was 78,288 men of all arms.^ Longstreet was posted 
on the heights back of the old town in a formidable 

1 Taylor's "General Lee," pp. 145, 146. 



256 ROBERT E. LEE 

position, and Jackson was (on the 29th of Novem- 
ber) despatched by Lee to guard the crossing-places 
further down the river. Early, in command of Ewell's 
Division, was sent to Skinker's Neck, a point ten or 
twelve miles below the town. D. H. Hill was placed at 
Port Royal, five miles yet farther down. A. P. Hill and 
Taliaferro were posted at or near Guinea Station, on the 
railway to Richmond — the former within a few miles 
of Longstreet's right and the latter some five miles 
farther off, all about an equal distance from Long- 
street and D. H. Hill. With his troops thus disposed 
in a way to lead Burnside to attack and at the same 
time to enable him to concentrate at the moment of 
attack and defeat him, Lee awaited his enemy's next 
move, while his cavalry division guarded his flank and 
patrolled the stream. He had not long to watch, and 
this time was put to good use in fortifying. An at- 
tempt to pass the Federal gunboats up the river was 
defeated at Port Royal by D. H. Hill and Stuart's 
horse artillery, and Early caused to end what was ap- 
parently an attempt to cross at Skinker's Neck. But 
on the 11th Burnside moved directly on Fredericks- 
burg. 

The actual laying of the pontoons, after a number of 
attempts in which the troops attempting it were picked 
off, man by man, by Barksdale's Mississippi regiments 
posted in the cellars of houses overlooking the water, 
was gallantly effected by the Federal troops on the 
afternoon of the 11th, under cover of a heavy artillery 
fire from 150 guns, and that evening and the follow- 
ing day Burnside's army crossed over on five bridges, 
their movements being veiled by a heavy fog which 



FREDERICKSBURG 257 

rose from the river and the sodden ground, blanket- 
ing all beneath it. The following morning as the fog 
lifted, Burnside's army, with Franklin commanding his 
left and Sumner his right, filled the plains as they ad- 
vanced to the attack where Lee lay along the heights 
above the town, with Longstreet commanding his left 
and Jackson his right. It was a battle as fierce almost 
as Sharpsburg, and scarcely less deadly for the hap- 
less assailants. Also, like Sharpsburg, it was fatuously 
fought in detachments. The assault began on the less 
commanding hills to the south of the town where Jack- 
son lay, his right protected by the artillery and Stuart's 
Cavalry, faced north on the plain near Hamilton's 
Crossing. Here young John Pelham reaped fame by 
holding back the enemy for a time with a single piece, 
posted on the plain. Burnside had imagined that 
Jackson was still at Port Royal, fifteen miles below, 
guarding the crossing,^ and thus had ordered Frank- 
lin to seize the heights. Franklin promptly directed 
Reynolds to prepare to attack. He in compliance with 
his instructions " assigned the duty to Meade's divis- 
ion, supported by Gibbon's." In three battle-lines 
came on, as if on parade, Meade's and Gibbon's ear- 
nest Pennsylvanians. Line after line advanced to the 
attack, only to be swept back with terrific slaughter. 
When the infantry were swept back, the artillery was 
sent in to clear the way, and after a fierce duel the 
Pennsylvanians advanced again. At one point where 
a marshy stream bordered by woodland, known as 
Deep Run, came through, it had been supposed that 
the marsh was impassable, and thus a gap of about 600 

> Ropes, II, p. 468. 



258 ROBERT E. LEE 

yards had been left in Jackson's lines, though Early 
lay across it only a third of a mile to the rear. Here, 
shielded by the woods from the leaden sleet as they 
advanced, the gallant assailants broke through the 
first line of A. P. Hill. Passing between the brigades 
of Lane and Archer, the first brigade turned to the 
right and rolled up Lane's right flank, while the next 
one, sweeping to the left, struck Archer's flank, who, 
though taken by surprise, held on stoutly. Had they 
been supported the situation might have been serious, 
but Thomas came to Lane's aid, and Jackson ordered 
up Early and Taliaferro from his third line, while Gregg 
brought up his brigade in time to help stay the disaster, 
though it cost liim his life to do so. 

The leading regiment in the advance of Gibbon's 
troops was the 107th Pennsylvania, led by its gallant 
commander, *Colonel (later General) T. F. McCoy, a 
veteran of the Mexican War. In the advance it was 
separated for a time from the rest of the line, and the 
leading place was taken by other troops, which were 
staggered and stopped by the terrific fire directed 
against them. Finding his advance checked. General 
Gibbon rode up to the 107th Pennsylvania, and point- 
ing to the front, said: "1 desire this regiment to take 
that wood at the point of the bayonet." Colonel 
McCoy gave the orders to unsling knapsacks and fix 
bayonets, and, after a few simple words to his men, 
moved forward. Passing over the broken troops in 
their front, they rushed onward and penetrated the 
wood, breaking through the line before them and clear- 
ing the line of the railroad. 

This was but one of many gallant actions that day, 



FREDERICKSBURG 259 

so fatal to the Union arms; but it marked the furthest 
advance of Burnside's troops on Lee's right. 

Frankhn's brave divisions having failed to break 
Lee's right, an assault was made against Lee's left by 
Sumner, who had been ordered to hold his men where 
they were sheltered by the town, until "an impression" 
could be made on Lee's right. It was an even more 
impossible and deadly task than Franklin had essayed. 
A canal too deep to cross save by bridges stretched 
across the fiat below the hill. A stout stone wall ran 
along the base of the hill known as Marye's Heights, 
and up the slope rifle pits had been dug to shelter all 
the men needed for the defence, while on top were 
posted the artillery and supporting infantry, all sweep- 
ing the level plain below with an iron hail. ''Six 
distinct and separate assaults were made against Long- 
street's front," line after line rushing recklessly for- 
ward under the deadly fire ''only to be torn to pieces" 
and melt away without making any impression on 
Lee's determined veterans. Franklin was now called 
on to renew his attack and co-operate on the left. He 
was unable to respond. His power was spent. His 
force had been exhausted. When night came the 
great army of Burnside had been hurled back with 
losses amounting to 12,500 men, "sacrificed to incom- 
petency," after having displayed, in a task which "ex- 
ceeded human endeavor," a heroism which "won the 
praise and the pity of their opponents." ^ 

» Taylor's "General Lee," p. 148. Allan, pp. 475-509. Ropes, II, 
pp. 462-7. Alexander, pp. 310-16. The losses in the Federal army 
.numbered 12,653; in the Confederate army, 5,322, killed and wounded. 



260 ROBERT E. LEE 

The following day passed without the renewal of the 
attack which Lee expected, and which Burnside pro- 
posed, only to have his lieutenants, who knew the 
futility of it, protest against such useless sacrifice of 
life; and next morning Burnside, shaken and dis- 
tressed over his disaster, sent a flag of truce to Jack- 
son's front, asking for a cessation of hostilities to bury 
the dead/ As he finished burying his dead he, under 
cover of a winter storm, retired to the other side in 
the gloom of defeat and broke his pontoon bridges. 
It was without doubt one of the most ineffective bat- 
tles ever fought by the North. A little later Burnside 
charged a number of his best generals with having 
failed him and thus caused his defeat. He issued an 
order dismissing from the service Generals Hooker, 
Brooks, Newton, and Cochrane, and relieving from duty 
with the Army of the Potomac, Generals Franklin 
W. F. Smith, Sturgis, Ferrero, and other officers.^ The 
final answer to this wholesale dismissal came after his 
"mud-campaign" affair of five or six weeks later, when 
he attempted to do what Hooker later attempted to 



' The writer as a small boy rode over the battle-field of Fredericks- 
burg with his father, who was a major on the staff of General William 
N. Pendleton, General Lee's chief of artillery, and he recalls vi\'idly 
the terrible sight of a battle-field while the dead are being buried : blood 
everywhere — along the trenches, the shattered fences, and the road- 
sides — the orchards, peeled by the bullets and canister, looked at a little 
distance as if covered with snow; the plank fences, splintered by shot 
and shrapnel, looked as though they had been whitewashed, and the 
field, torn by shells and covered with dead horses, broken arms, and 
debris, presented an ineffaceable scene of desolation, while on the 
common, being filled with the bloody and rigid forms of those who two 
days before had been the bravest of the brave, was a long, wide, ghastly 
trench, where the path of glory ended. 

2 Off. Rep., 31, p. 998. Ropes, II, p. 470. 



I FREDERICKSBURG 261 

do, with disastrous results, at Chancellorsville. He 
"stuck in the mud," and, on 'Hhe representations 
made by his heutenants to the President, was super- 
seded" by ''Fighting" Joe Hooker. 

Fredericksburg was, with the exceptioji of Cold 
Harbor, almost the only wholly defensive battle that 
Lee fought, and in this he could scarcely believe that 
Burnside had put forth all his strength. His report 
and letters show that he expected and awaited another 
and fiercer assault. It is asserted that Jackson coun- 
selled a night attack on Burnside's army as it lay in 
the town after the battle, and he undoubtedly contem- 
plated the possibility of such an attack, for he ordered 
his chief of medical staff to be ready with his bandages 
to furnish bands for the arms of the men, by which 
they would know each other should such an attack be 
made.^ Lee, however, decided against this plan, if it 
was ever formally proposed, and in his report he gives 
his reason. ''The attack on the 13th," he says, "had 
been so easily repulsed, and by so small a part of our 
I army, that it was not supposed the enemy would limit 
his effort, which, in view of the magnitude of his prep- 
j arations and the extent of his force, seemed to be 
;i comparatively insignificant. Believing, therefore, that 
' he would attack us, it was not deemed expedient to 
lose the advantage of our position and expose the 
I troops to the fire of his inaccessible batteries beyond 
(the river by advancing against him." It appears to 
I be the general opinion of military critics that the mis- 
it 'Address on Stonewall Jackson by Dr. Hunter McGuire, "The Con- 
j federate Cause." (The Bell Co., Richmond, Va.) 



262 ROBERT E. LEE 

take of Fredericksburg by the Southern leaders was 
the substitution of the hne of the Rappahannock (or 
that of the North Anna, which Lee and Jackson bpth 
favored. Even after his terrific defeat Burnside could 
not be pursued; his flanks were so well protected by 
the river and by the tremendous fortifications along 
the Stafford Heights, on the north bank of the stream. 
Had he attempted to cross the North Anna and met 
with a similar defeat, he would probably never have 
been able to get his army back across the bottomless 
levels of the Mattapony. However, the South was well 
satisfied with the result. Wlien Lee visited Richmond, 
a little later, the authorities informed him that the war 
was substantially over — the fight was won. Lee knew 
better. And the others were to have a rude awaken- 
ing. Lee knew that his resources were being steadily 
exhausted, and that those of the enemy were inex- 
haustible. 

Lee was at this time at the zenith of his fame as a 
successful general, yet was never more modest. His 
letter of Christmas Day, 1862, to his wife is full of the 
spirit of the man in his most intimate moments. He 
writes: "I will commence this holy day by writing to 
you. My heart is filled with gratitude to God for the 
unspeakable mercies with which He has blessed us in 
this day; for those He has granted us from the begin- 
ning of life, and particularly for those He has vouch- 
safed us during the past year. What should become 
of us without His crowning help and protection? Oh! 
if our people would only recognize it and cease from 
vain self-boasting and adulation, how strong would be _ 



SCALE OF MILES 




; Fredericksburg — Position of Union and Confederate Forces 
ON December 13, 1862 



FREDERICKSBURG 263 

my belief in final success and happiness to our country. 
But what a cruel thing is war to separate and destroy 
families and friends, and mar the purest joys and hap- 
piness God has granted us in this world, to fill our 
hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, 
and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world! 
I pray that on this day, when only peace and good-will 
are preached to mankind, better thoughts may fill the 
hearts of our enemies and turn them to peace. Our 
army was never in such good health and condition 
since I have been attached to it. I believe they share 
with me my disappointment that the enemy did not 
renew the combat on the 13th. I was holding back 
all that day and husbanding our strength and ammu- 
nition for the great struggle for which I thought I was 
preparing. Had I divined that was to have been his 
only effort, he would have had more of it. My heart 
bleeds at the death of every one of our gallant men." 

Should the portrait of a victorious general be drawn, 
I know no better example than this simple outline of a 
Christian 'soldier drawn out of his heart that Christmas 
morning in his tent, while the world rang with his vic- 
tory of two weeks before. It is a portrait of which the 
South may well be proud. 



CHAPTER XI 
CHANCELLORSVILLE 

But again we have, following on his success in the de- 
fence of Fredericksburg, the proof of Lee's boldness in 
offensive operations, which resulted in what is esteemed 
among foreign military critics as the most brilliant 
action, not only of the Civil War, but of the century. 
With a vast expenditure of care and treasure, the 
armies of the Union were once more recruited and 
equipped, and the command of the Army of the Po- 
tomac was, as we have seen, intrusted to General 
Hooker — ''Fighting Joe Hooker," as he was called — 
whose reputation was such that he was supposed to 
make good at once all the deficiencies of McClellan and 
Burnside. He had shown capacity to command a 
corps both in the West and the East, and was given to 
criticising his superiors with much self-confidence. 
His self-confidence was, indeed, so great that it called 
from Mr. Lincoln one of those remarkable letters 
which he was given to writing on occasion. He says: 
" I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your 
recently saying that both the army and the govern- 
ment needed a dictator. Of course, it is not for tliis, 
but in spite of it, that I have given you the com- 
mand. Only those generals who gain successes can 
set up dictators. What I ask of you is military suc- 

264 



I 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 265 

cess, and I will risk the dictatorship. . . ." The situa- 
tion of the Confederacy was at this time, however the 
glamour of Lee's victory may have blinded the au- 
thorities, steadily growing more precarious. The far 
South-west was substantially cut off. In Kentucky and 
Tennessee the Union arms had prospered; and along 
the seaboard of the Carolinas, from New-Berne south 
the Confederate forces had much to do to hold their 
own. The North had now some 900,000 men in the 
field and the South less than two-thirds of that number. 

In the spring the interior of Virginia and Rich- 
mond itself were threatened from Fortress Monroe and 
Suffolk, on the south side of the James, and a requisi- 
tion was made on Lee by the government in Richmond 
to send Longstreet with sufficient troops to make 
Richmond secure. Accordingly, although Ransom had 
already gone with 3,600 men, Longstreet was now sent, 
with the gallant divisions of Pickett and Hood, to 
take care of '^the south side," thus cutting down Lee's 
army by some 20,000 veteran troops. Lee, who was 
not deceived by the enemy's movements, instructed 
Longstreet to so ^'dispose his troops that they could 
return to the Rappahannock at the first alarm." But 
this proved impossible. Just when the Union authori- 
ties had learned, says Henderson, not to interfere with 
their general's plans, the Confederate authorities took 
it up. Contrary to Lee's expressed request, Longstreet, 
who wished to go, was sent to Suffolk, a hundred and 
twenty odd miles from Lee, and when Hooker moved, 
Longstreet was not able to rejoin Lee in time to aid him. 

The plan on which Hooker now proceeded is acknowl- 



266 ROBERT E. LEE 

edged to have been well conceived, and it gave prom- 
ise of victory. Lee had fortified the right bank of the 
river for something like forty miles from Banks's Ford, 
above Fredericksburg, to Port Royal, below, and these 
fortifications were filled with the victors of Fredericks- 
burg. It would not do to attack him in front; but 
Hooker, who had taken a firm grasp of the situation, 
felt that he could attack him in the flank and with 
his great army crush him. In the full assurance that 
he had "the finest army in the world" and would 
soon be " holding the strongest position on the planet," 
he elaborated his plans with care and prepared to 
deliver the assault which should force Lee from his 
defensive position, with the alternative of the capture of 
his entire army. Possibly, he ranked Lee as a captain 
good for defensive operations alone. If so, his error 
cost him dear. While he was congratulating himself 
on his tactics, and issuing grandiloquent proclamations 
to his eager yet untried army in the tone of a conqueror, 
declaring that the enemy must come out from his 
breastworks and fight him on his own ground, "where 
certain destruction awaited him," or else "ingloriously 
fly," Lee performed the same masterly feat which he 
had already performed before Richmond and in the 
Piedmont, and with yet more signal success. Detach- 
ing Stonewall Jackson from his force in front of Sedg- 
wick, he sent him around Hooker's right at Chancellors- 
ville, and while the latter was congratulating himself 
that Lee was in full retreat on Gordonsville, he fell 
upon him and rolled him up like a scroll. Unhappily, 
his great lieutenant who performed this feat fell in 




w 
u 

fl 
I? 

o 

CO 
O 



'A 

o 



i 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 267 

the moment of victory, shot by his own men in the 
dusk of the evening as he galloped past from a reoon- 
noissance. Possibly, Hooker's army was saved by this 
fatal accident from capture or annihilation that night. 
For when, a week later, Stonewall Jackson, still mur- 
muring of his battle-lines, passed over the river to rest 
under the shade of the trees, it was with a fame hardly 
second to that of his great captain. Such in brief was 
the campaign which ended at Chancellorsville. In more 
detail — and it deserves more detail — it was as follows : 
In fact, Lee had intended to assume the offensive 
himself as soon as it was possible to move, and had 
been prevented from doing so before only by the con- 
dition of his horses, the want of feed for them, and of 
supplies for his men. The conquering enemy before 
which his victorious army finally melted away was al- 
ready encompassing his lines, impregnable to any other 
foe, and no strategy nor tactics, however masterly, no 
constancy, however unconquerable, could hold it back. 
He might fill his wasted ranks even though it took 
"the seed-corn of the Confederacy" to do it, but he 
could not subsist his army nor equip them to march. 
Whatever delusions the government in Richmond had 
I as to the coming of peace, he had none. He had already 
1 written that he might "have to yield to a stronger force 
than General Burnside," and all winter as he lay in his 
j trenches after Burnside's defeat, contained by that 
I "stronger force" than the great army opposite him, 
* he was "haunted by the idea of securing the provisions, 
; wagons, and guns of the enemy." ^ Ten days before 

1 ' Letter of Lee to General Trimble, March 8, 1863, War Records, 
' XXV, part II, p. 658. 



268 ROBERT E. LEE 

Hooker moved, Lee had written an urgent letter to 
President Davis stating that he considered it "all im- 
portant that we should assume the aggressive by the 1st 
of May," adding that if he could be placed in a condi- 
tion to make a vigorous advance at that time, he thought 
the valley could be swept of the enemy and the army 
opposite be thrown north of the Potomac. He ap- 
pears, indeed, to have taken ''our old friend, J. H.," as 
he speaks of him, rather humorously ; for he wrote on 
the 26th of February: ''General Hooker is obliged to 
do something. I do not know what it will be. He is 
playing the Chinese game, trying what frightening will 
do. He runs out his guns, starts his wagons and troops 
up and down the river, and creates an excitement gen- 
erally. Our men look on in content, give a cheer, and 
all again subsides in statu quo ante bellum." ^ 

Such was the temper of general and men when Hooker 
finally fulfilled Lee's prophecy and did "something." 

On the 27th of April, Hooker, who had worked hard 
to get his army in shape, began his movement to de- 
stroy Lee, as to the success of which neither he nor his 
army had the least doubt. Nor, except for the genius 
of his opponents and the constancy of the men they 
commanded, was there much room for doubt. He had 
130,000 men and 448 guns; Lee had 62,000 men and 
170 gims.^ Hooker would divide his army, with one 
part threaten him, with the other manoeuvre him out of 
his position, and uniting his own forces on the field of 
battle, crush him by sheer weight. His line of communi- 
cation with the Potomac was securely protected by the 

' Letter to his daughter Agnes, February 26, 1863. 

- Bigelow's " ChanccUorsvillc Campaign," pp. 21, 262. 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 269 

Rappahannock; so he moved at ease. While Sedgwick, 
with two corps, the First and Sixth, was ordered to 
cross the Rappahannock below Lee's fortified position 
at Fredericksburg, threaten his right flank, and assail 
his lines of communication with Richmond, follow- 
ing him up if he retreated. Hooker, with the Fifth, 
Eleventh, and Twelfth Corps and Pleasanton's brigades 
of horse, marched up the river, crossed it high up beyond 
Lee's extreme left, and prepared to assail his rear. 
His army was in as fine spirits as himself, and it re- 
sponded cheerfully to his eager urging. 

With a view to drawing off Lee's cavalry and cutting 
his line of communication, Hooker had sent his own 
cavalry under Stoneman to operate toward Orange 
Court House and Gordonsville and the Virginia Central 
Railroad. But Stuart knew the situation too well to be 
drawn off at such a critical juncture, and having sent 
a regiment or two under W. H. F. Lee to follow Stone- 
man in his raid, he applied himself to his proper duty of 
hanging on the flank of Hooker's advancing columns 
and furnishing Lee with information as to his move- 
ments and strength. As Hooker advanced, the alert 
cavalry general detached a regiment to retard him, and 
making a detour with one of his brigades, flung himself 
across the routes leading to Lee's communications. On 
the morning of the 28th of April, Lee received from 
J him the news that Hooker was moving in force toward 
I Kelly's Ford, well to his left, and next evening he re- 

I ceived the further information that a corps had crossed 
^ that afternoon at Ely's Ford and Germana Ford. He 

II thereupon brought Jackson up from below to Hamilton's 



270 ROBERT E. LEE 

Crossing, and he promptly sent Anderson with his divis- 
ion to Chancellorsville, a point of junction of the roads 
leading from Orange Court House and the fords of the 
Rapidan and Rappahannock, with orders to fortify 
the best positions commanding the roads. Meantime, 
equally interesting information came from the south- 
ward. Jackson sent him word on the morning of the 
29th that, under cover of the fog, Sedgwick had laid 
down his bridges and was crossing in force at Deep 
Run, where he was protected by his powerful batteries 
on the Stafford Heights. Lee was in good humor; 
''something" was being done, and he would now be 
able to do something himself. His remark to the staff 
officer bringing him Jackson's report was a jocular 
one: ''Well, I heard firing, and I thought it was 
time some of you lazy young fellows were coming 
to tell me what it was about. Tell your good general 
that he knows what to do with the enemy just as 
well as I do." Next morning came the further informa- 
tion from Stuart that the troops that had crossed the 
Rapidan in Lee's rear were the Fifth, Eleventh, and 
Twelfth Corps, and that their commanders, Meade, 
Howard, and Slocum, were with them. Also, that 
Anderson was falling back. Thus, it was known to 
Lee that the main body of Hooker's army was over 
the river, marching on him to crush him. Jackson 
wished to attack Sedgwick, who had entrenched him- 
self on the river under cover of the tremendous batteries 
on the Stafford side. But Lee deemed this as impracti- 
cable as it was at the first battle of Fredericksburg. " It 
was," he said, "hard to get at the enemy, and harder 



I 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 271 

still to get away if we drove him into the river." Never- 
theless, such was his confidence in his lieutenant, that 
he told him that "if he thought it could be done," he 
would "give orders for it." Jackson, however, on ex- 
amining the ground, came to the same conclusion with 
Lee, and Lee, leaving Early with 10,000 men, including 
his reserve artillery under General Pendleton — some 
50 guns — to hold Sedgwick in check, with the rest of 
his army turned on Hooker, a dozen miles away, march- 
ing on his rear through the forests of Spottsylvania. 
Jackson was sent to relieve Anderson, who had taken 
and entrenched a position along a stretch of rising 
ground facing the roads by which Hooker was advan- 
cing through the wilderness. 

Fortunately for Lee, Hooker's self-assurance appears 
to have left him suddenly when he came face to face 
with the situation he had developed. He had laid out 
a good plan, and had carried it through to a considerable 
extent with marked success, and to his own entire sat- 
isfaction. Sedgwick (with three army corps) had easily 
crossed the river below Lee's right and was ready, as 
directed, to co-operate with Hooker. The latter's own 
large army had marched swiftly and was in the highest 
spirits, and he was now well in Lee's rear, in a posi- 
tion which he declared "the strongest on the planet." ^ 
According to current report he had even asserted that 
" God Almighty couldn't prevent his destroying the rebel 
army," a speech which is said to have " created great un- 
easiness even to the most irreligious." ^ Yet, as he passed 

* C. Schurz's " Autobiography." 
^Bigelow's "Chancellorsville," p. 237. 



272 ROBERT E. LEE 

mile after mile into the tangles of the Spottsylvania 
wilderness, he suddenly hesitated and paused in his ad- 
vance. Whether the Federal commander was momen- 
tarily overcome by the magnitude of Lee's fame, or 
whether by the terrifying mystery of the shadowy 
silences stretching before him, from which no word had 
come since he crossed the Rappahannock and turned 
southward, or whether there was a personal reason, all 
of which have been asserted, he halted and began to 
boast of his achievement. He issued an orderto his army 
as if he were already a victor. He declared that ''the 
operations of the Fifth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Corps 
have been a succession of splendid achievements." Yet 
they had done nothing but march, and, according to 
some of his own officers, felt that this was sheer gascon- 
ade. He announced further that "the operations of the 
last three days have determined that the enemy must 
either ingloriously fly or come out from behind his de- 
fences and give us battle on our own ground, where 
certain destruction awaits him." This was nearer the 
truth, and was quite true except the last conclusion, 
which the event was to prove quite false. It was this 
pause and this misplaced confidence in the Federal 
commander which gave Lee his opportunity. 

When Hooker crossed the Rapidan, the region into 
which he plunged after leaving the open country is 
one which, since the earliest advent of the white man 
on the continent, has amply justified the name by 
which it is known — 'Hhe Wilderness." A densely 
wooded, rolling plateau stretches nearly twenty miles 
in extent each way. Too poor to be cultivated success- 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 273 

fully, it has remained substantially as it was when the 
white man first came, an almost impenetrable jungle 
of scrubby growth, which used to be known as "the 
Poisoned Lands." A few small streams, locally termed 
"runs," steal through it, and in a few places the land 
was found good enough to pay for clearing and culti- 
vating; but for the most part it remained forest and 
thicket, given up to the denizens of the forest, the deer, 
the 'possum, the wild turkey, and the raccoon. Gov- 
ernor Spottswood established an iron furnace within or 
near its borders as far back as the middle of the eigh- 
teenth century, and at the time of the war some of his 
descendants still attempted to work the not very re- 
munerative ore which existed in certain places, to which 
fact was due in part the success of Lee's contemplated 
plan. Three or four roads only ran through this Wilder- 
ness in the direction of Fredericksburg. Two of these, 
running generally eastward — the first, known as the 
Turnpike, leading from Kelly's Ford, on the Rappahan- 
nock, and Germana Ford, on the Rapidan, and the sec- 
ond, the Orange Plank Road — united at a point where 
stood a church known as "Wilderness Church," and a 
tavern called Dowdall's Tavern, about four miles west 
of the Cross Roads, known as Chancellorsville, a planta- 
tion on a high plateau, eight or ten miles from Fred- 
ericksburg. At Chancellorsville the roads met and 
crossed a third road, leading from Kelly's Ford, on the 
Rappahannock, by way of Ely's and Germana Fords, 
on the Rapidan, and dividing again, ran separately 
for several miles toward Fredericksburg, then, uniting 
once more, they formed one road to Fredericksburg. 



274 ROBERT E. LEE 

Toward the western part of the Wilderness, a few miles 
west of Chancellorsville, ran north and south, at nearly- 
right angles to these highways, a country road known as 
the Brock Road, leading to Spottsylvania, and where 
the Brock Road made a curve, across the arc, a mile or 
so further west lay a narrow country road screened, like 
the others, by woods. On the eastern side of the Wil- 
derness, to the north-eastward of Chancellorsville, fol- 
lowing generally the course of the Rappahannock to 
Fredericksburg, was the River Road, which was united 
with the others at Chancellorsville by a road which 
crossed the Rappahannock at the United States Ford. 
One other way cut through the Wilderness almost due 
east and west, several miles south of the Turnpike and 
Plank Roads — an unfinished railway, laid off from 
Fredericksburg toward Orange Court House. Thus it 
will be seen that Chancellorsville, on open and rising 
ground, w^here three of the four principal roads through 
this wooded Wilderness met, was a point of the greatest 
importance. And this all the leaders knew. This point 
Hooker had now secured. 

When Jackson, about eight o'clock on the morning 
of the 1st, reached the line where Anderson had en- 
trenched across the roads, several miles east of Chan- 
cellorsville, he, by Lee's orders, at once abandoning the 
breastworks, advanced on Hooker, who, established 
in his strong position at Chancellorsville, was now be- 
ginning to advance once more. It is possible that this 
battle was won the moment Jackson passed beyond 
Anderson's entrenchments. From this time Hooker 
lost all initiative and fought almost wholly on the de- 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 275 

fensive. Jackson soon came on the Federal cavalry, 
moving in advance of the columns which Hooker was 
now moving forward. Anderson was put in advance, 
with McLaws following, together with Jackson's own 
troops, and moving forward by both the Turnpike and 
Plank Roads, the cavalry was soon driven in. Then, as 
he advanced farther, McLaws, on the Turnpike, found 
his way barred by infantry and artillery posted beyond 
an open field, and it was necessary to deploy his bri- 
gades to turn their flank before proceeding onward. 
Jackson, on the left, advancing along the Plank Road, 
likewise found his way barred by an advancing column, 
and was obliged to flank with a brigade along the un- 
finished railway to the enemy's right before he could 
advance farther. This done, however, the Confederates 
followed the retiring Federals, until toward sunset Lee, 
who was personally present, found himself immediately 
in front of Hooker's army of some 70,000 men, posted 
on the plateau of Chancellorsville in the position which 
Hooker had boasted was his "own ground," and "the 
strongest position on the planet." Hooker's left rested 
on the Rappahannock River, covering the United States 
Ford, to which a road led from Chancellorsville; his 
centre occupied the rise that covered the Cross Roads 
at Chancellorsville, and, extending westward, took in 
the eminences of Fairview and Hazel Grove, while his 
right, refused, stretched westward through the forest 
and ended no one knew where. Of the strength of this 
position Lee himself has spoken. 

This was the position which Lee proposed to at- 
tack before Sedgwick could come up, wherever the 



276 ROBERT E. LEE 

weakest point should be found. He immediately had 
the enemy's front carefully reconnoitred and himself re- 
connoitred personall}^ the position of the left wing, rest- 
ing on the Rappahannock, behind a stream known as 
Mineral Spring Run. It was found too strong to 
attack in front — at least at night — and Lee halted 
and formed line of battle across the Plank Road, a 
couple of miles from Chancellorsville, his left extend- 
ing toward Catherine Furnace, above which Hooker's 
right centre lay in force. Into the bivouac where Lee 
and Jackson consulted, in a pine thicket near the Plank 
Road, came Stuart that evening with important infor- 
mation which solved the difficulty. General Fitz Lee, 
reconnoitring around the enemy's right wing miles to 
the north-westward, had discovered that this wing, 
where were posted the German divisions of Howard, 
rested in the air, having no protection but the woods 
and a couple of regiments refused with an ordinary 
breastwork. It presented a better chance of turning 
than Porter had presented at Gaines's Mill. The at- 
tempt, however, was full of danger, first in that it di- 
vided Lee's army, already numerically far below that 
which it confronted ; and secondly, in that it was neces- 
sary to pass the flanking column entirely across the front 
of Hooker's centre and right, posted in line of battle, 
and he might, if active enough, strike it on the march 
and smash it to pieces. Lee and his lieutenants, how- 
ever, were prepared to take all necessary chances where 
the reward was so promising, and after a conference the 
audacious plan was decided on. The forest would 
partly conceal the movements, and Stuart would use 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 277 

his cavalry as a screen and cover to the moving troops. 
McLaws was ordered to protect his position in Hooker's 
front by as strong entrenchments as possible, and Jack- 
son was given charge of the flanking force, numbering 
about 25,000 men. He sent his engineers to ascertain if 
any other road than the Plank Road led through the 
forest toward the south-west, and on learning from a 
gentleman who lived near by that a new way or road 
had recently been cut to haul cord-wood to a furnace, 
he informed General Lee that his troops would move 
at once. The order was soon given, and as the day 
broke, the Second Corps, with Fitz Lee's Cavalry (the 
2d Virginia, commanded by Colonel Munford, in the 
lead) covering the front, took the road to the south- 
west, leaving Lee with only Anderson's and McLaws's 
Divisions, some 10,000 men, to hold in check Hooker's 
powerful army. Audacity has rarely gone further, and 
never was it better rewarded. Throwing forward skir- 
mishers, and opening with his artillery from every emi- 
nence, Lee made a demonstration which kept Hooker 
well occupied. The movement of Jackson's column 
was seen, the dust rising high above the trees, and 
was reported to Hooker early in the morning, but 
he jumped to the conclusion that the enemy, finding 
him too strong on ground chosen by himself, had taken 
the other alternative that he had set for him and was 
ingloriously flying. Lee, he believed, forced by Sedg- 
wick from the direct line of retreat on Richmond, was 
retreating on Gordonsville. Though at times he wa- 
vered as he consulted his maps and ejaculated that 
it was not like Lee, nearly all day long he labored 



278 ROBERT E. LEE 

under this delusion. As at a certain point Jackson, 
with baggage trains, etc., turned almost due south 
down a valley, it was not, perhaps, unnatural that this 
should have appeared to the Federal commander a flight. 
The moving column was shelled vigorously from the 
high plateau on Hooker's right, known as Hazel Grove, 
and Sickles was sent with his corps to cut up the 
moving force, but he met with such a reception from 
Anderson, on Lee's left, and made such slow progress, 
that he called for reinforcements, and Howard, holding 
Hooker's extreme right, was directed to send him a 
brigade, and despatched Barlow, with the brigade which 
formed his reserve, to Sickles's aid, thus weakening 
the very point against which Lee had sent Jackson to 
address his attack. As Sickles with Pleasanton's cav- 
alry began to make progress, Jackson sent back the 
brigades of Archer and Thomas, and Brown's batallion 
of artillery, to aid Anderson; but, unswerved from his 
design, with the rest of his force he pushed on south- 
westward, till he reached the road he was seeking — a 
road west of the Brock Road, running north and south 
well beyond the extreme end of Hooker's right. Here 
turning northward, Jackson struck for the point where 
this road crosses the Plank Road, some two miles west 
of Hooker's extreme right, which it was planned to de- 
stroy. Reaching the Cross Roads about two o'clock, he 
received from General Fitzhugh Lee, who had halted 
here, the information that the enemy were apparently 
wholly ignorant of his approach, and by proceeding a 
mile or so farther on to the Turnpike, he might strike 
Hooker's right in the rear. It has been related that, 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 279 

riding forward with General Fitz Lee, attended by a 
single courier, he sought the hill-top from which Lee had 
discovered the facts he disclosed, and found the situation 
still unchanged. Lee speaks of 'Hhe commander of the 
cavalry accompanying him/' but does not say it was 
himself, and it seems certain that Munford with the 
Second Virginia Cavalry was in the lead all the time. A 
few hundred yards below them to the eastward was the 
end of Hooker's line and fortifications, heavily protected 
in front with abatis, but resting on nothing that could af- 
ford protection, and "untenanted by a single company.'* 
The men were scattered about in groups, loafing, gossip- 
ing, playing cards, drawing rations, and cooking, while 
their arms were stacked as though they were in a sum- 
mer encampment. Lee says that Jackson's eyes ''burnt 
with a brilliant glow" while he scanned the extraor- 
dinary scene, but he uttered no words though his lips 
moved. Then suddenly turning to his courier he gave 
his orders: ''Tell General Rodes to move across the 
Plank Road and halt when he gets to the old turn- 
pike; I will join him there." He turned back and 
scanned the scene again and then rode rapidly down 
the hill.^ 

By four o'clock, or a little after, the divisions which 
had turned back to balk Sickles's advance on the turn- 
ing point were coming up, and Rodes was deploying 
his men in line of battle across the turnpike, envelop- 
ing Howard's still unsuspecting right, still engaged in 
getting supper and amusing themselves. Hooker, him- 
self, was equally unsuspecting. On being informed 

»r. Lee's "Lee." 



280 ROBERT E. LEE 

in the morning that Lee was crossing his front, he had 
notified Howard to look to his right and secure it, and 
Howard repUed that he had done so ; but after Sickles 
drove his way through toward where Jackson turned 
south, he returned to his complacent belief that Lee 
was fleeing or preparing to do so. And at four o'clock, 
just at the time that Jackson was preparing to strike 
home, he sent an order to Sedgwick to capture Freder- 
icksburg and everything in it as soon as preparations 
permitted, and "vigorously pursue the enemy. We 
know," he added, "that the enemy is fleeing, trying to 
save his trains. Two of Sickles's divisions are among 
them." It was a fatal error into which he had fallen, 
and to his undoings Howard also held this view. 

It was near six o'clock when, everything being in 
readiness, his men in two lines of battle, with columns in 
support, and all orders given for the advance to roll up 
the enemy's right and sweep forward, Jackson gave 
Rodes the word to go forward. At the sound of a bugle, 
re-echoed from right to left where the divisions were 
posted in battle line awaiting the signal, the lines swept 
forward, skirmishers in advance, and driving the startled 
denizens of the forest scurrying before them, broke 
through the woods on the equally startled line of How- 
ard's Germans, Twenty regiments of Howard's corps 
lay in the trenches, along which Jackson's cheering bat- 
tle lines were sweeping; but beyond them was a gap 
of over a mile, left by the withdrawal of Sickles and 
of Barlow's reserve brigade. Thus, though they at- 
tempted to make a stand, and, Schurz declares, with- 
stood the shock for nearly a half hour, they were 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 281 

soon swept away in utter rout and panic. Beyond 
them another brigade, facing to the right, attempted 
to stay the fierce surge of Jackson's lines; but every 
mounted officer was struck from his horse by the rain 
of bullet and canister, and, after a gallant but hapless 
effort, they too were swept into the rout. In the open 
lay other German regiments trying to stem the tide, 
while on the opposite ridge across the wide clearing, 
from breastwork and rifle-pit blazed the fierce fire of 
Howard's. last brigade, checking for a few moments the 
steady onsweep with rifle fire and canister; but Rodes, 
dashing forward, cleared the field, and then rushing up 
the ridge drove on with resistless force into the red 
flame pouring from the long line of breastworks, and 
climbing the parapets, swept away the last remnant 
of Howard's corps. Hooker's right wing. The rout of 
this corps was now complete and hopeless, and it de- 
manded good generalship and great courage in line 
and staff not to have it extended to the next command 
in the same degree. While this catastrophe was befall- 
ing his right wing, Hooker is said to have been seated 
on the portico of the Chancellor mansion, congratulating 
himself on the success of his well-matured plan. About 
him were staff officers who, like him, believed that 
Lee's second corps was in full retreat and could well 
be left to Sickles and Pleasanton and Barlow till such 
time as he should have rolled back the rest of Lee's 
army and taken up the pursuit. Orders had already 
been given to his left to advance and overwhelm what 
remained in their front. It was all like a dream that 
has been realized. From this dream the Federal com- 



282 ROBERT E. LEE 

mander was rudely awakened. From his right down 
the aisles of the Wilderness came suddenly the sound 
of battle — not of skirmishing, nor of a mere reconnois- 
sance such as cavalry might have made, but of furious 
battle, and nearer and nearer it rolled, while at the 
same time increased on his front the fight which had 
proceeded all day where Lee in person was keeping his 
centre occupied. So near and astonishing rolled the 
din of battle on the right that the officers rose and 
sought their horses, and one of them, going down to 
the road, gazed westward. The sight he saw in the dis- 
tance was one to astound him. ''My God! here they 
come," he cried, and dashed for his horse. The distant 
road was packed as far as the eye could see with the 
terrible debris of a routed army — men, horses, wagons 
• — all mingled in one indiscriminate and terrible panic. 
Happily for Hooker he had as brave and devoted men 
about him as ever faced death for a cause, and he had 
troops enough to fill any breach which Lee's army could 
make and still leave others behind. Officers and 
couriers were sent in all directions to order fresh troops 
to the threatened point. Sickles and Pleasanton and 
Barlow were summoned back to Hazel Grove to fill the 
gap they had left in the morning. Berry and Hays 
were transferred from beyond Chancellorsville, and the 
reserve artillery was rushed forward to the Fairview 
Heights, south-east of Hazel Grove, to hold Jackson in 
check at all hazards and, if possible, save Hooker's 
army. It was a close graze, but though the defeat 
was irrevocable, the army was saved from destruction 
by an event which is one of the strange tragedies of 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 283 

history. Jackson, in the hour of victory, was shot by 
some of his own men. This is how it happened. 

It was nearly dusk, and still Jackson kept driving on. 
His objective now was Hooker's centre at Chancellors- 
ville, a mile and a half ahead, and his line of retreat on 
the United States Ford Road, a half mile beyond. Rid- 
ing among his victorious but wellnigh exhausted troops, 
he continually urged them to keep their order. "Keep 
your places — keep your places; there is more work to 
do," he said to the officers. But his own work was 
almost done. 

Though so far Lee's audacious tactics had attained 
complete success, they were now to result in a misfort- 
une, at the cost of which, as he said on hearing it, any 
victory would be dear. As the dusk fell on Hooker's 
extreme right wing in irrevocable rout, fleeing behind 
the protection of the artillery massed on the eminence of 
Hazel Grove, near his right centre, Jackson, finding the 
pursuit slacken in the confusion of the dusky woods, and 
fearing to lose the richest fruit of his brilliant victory, 
rode forward on a reconnoissance, giving orders right 
and left, to such officers as he saw, to get their men in 
order and "push forward." "Push right ahead, Lane; 
right ahead," he said to one; to another: "Press them; 
cut them off from the United States Ford, Hill; press 
them." His lines were being straightened out for the 
next onward sweep on Chancellorsville itself, and he 
passed on through them, along the Plank Road toward 
where the Federal reserves were, with flying axes and 
bayonets, industriously trying with Berry's troops to 
get some sort of entrenchments and barricades along the 



284 ROBERT E. LEE 

Fairview Heights before the next onslaught came. As 
he passed forward he, with a wave of the hand toward 
the front, directed an officer of an infantry regiment 
lying in a small clearing to watch in that direction, and 
fire on whatever came from there. Having ridden so 
close to the Federal lines that their voices and axes 
could be clearly heard, he turned back, it is said, to 
hasten Hill's advance, and a moment later the road on 
which he was riding was swept by a sudden storm of 
canister from guns posted on the enemy's line to sweep 
the highway. Swerving aside to get out of the line of 
fire directly down the road, Jackson and his attendants 
turned at a gallop in the darkness into the clearing, 
almost immediately in front of the infantry line which 
he had a little before ordered to fire on whatever came 
from that way. They obeyed his command all too well. 
As the group of horsemen emerged with a rush from 
the wood and galloped down on them in the dusk, and 
the guns rattled in the thickets behind them, from the 
dark line stretched across the clearing came a blaze of 
fire, and Hooker's army was saved from instant de- 
struction. In the midst of the most brilliant achieve- 
ment of his brilliant career, Stonewall Jackson's career 
ended and passed into history. At the first unexpected 
volley a number of men fell dead or badly wounded 
and others flung themselves from their horses to avoid 
the next volley. Jackson's right hand was hurt and 
his left arm and shoulder were badly shattered. His 
horse, terrified and suddenly released from the mas- 
ter's guiding hand, wheeled and dashed back into 
the wood toward the enemy, where the overhanging 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 285 

boughs tore the rider's face and almost swept him out 
of the saddle. Jackson, however, managed to keep his 
seat, and after a little stopped him, and turned back 
toward his own lines, where Captain Wilbourn, of his 
staff, having caught the reins, the survivors of those 
with him lifted him down and made him lie on the 
ground to avoid the rain of bullets that was now sweep- 
ing over them. Hill had now come up and recognized 
him, and Morrison and Smith and Leigh, of Hill's staff, 
aided him to move on toward his own lines, and when 
a sleet of bullets and canister swept about them, laid 
him down in the ditch beside the road and protected 
him by interposing their own bodies between him and 
the line of fire. For a moment the range shifted, the 
enemy having changed from canister to shell, and again 
they moved on painfully. Then Jackson gave his last 
battle order. General Pender riding by, pushing his 
brigade to the front under the terrible fire, saw the sad 
procession, and asked who was hurt. ''A Confederate 
officer," was the reply, in accordance with Jackson's 
command. But Pender recognized him, and springing 
from his horse, spoke his grief. Then he added that the 
artillery fire was so deadly that he was afraid he should 
have to fall back. The words aroused Jackson from his 
half-fainting condition. Pushing aside those who sup- 
ported him, he raised himself to his full height. ''You 
must hold your ground, General Pender. You must hold 
out to the last, sir." It was the epitome at once of his 
own life and of the Southern cause. It was his last 
order until, with the light fading from his eyes forever, 
as he was passing over the river to rest under the shade 



286 ROBERT E. LEE 

of the trees, he murmured once more for A. P. Hill to 

pass his infantry forward. As he was being borne 
from the field on a litter carried on men's shoulders, 
the man at his wounded shoulder was shot down and 
the litter fell, throwing Jackson heavily on his wounded 
shoulder, and he sustained an injury to which later 
many attributed his death. At 2 a. m., by the fitful 
light afforded in a field hospital, his arm was ampu- 
tated. As he regained consciousness his first question, 
it is said, was whether Stuart had received his order to 
take command. When toward morning Stuart, who had 
arrived after midnight from Ely's Ford, where he was 
about to attack Averell's cavalry force and had taken 
charge, sent Major Pendleton to announce that Hill 
had been seriously wounded, and the men were in 
great confusion, and to ask what he wished done, he 
made a brave attempt to rally his sinking forces, but 
in vain. ''For a moment," says Dr. McGuire, "we be- 
lieved he had succeeded; for his nostrils dilated and 
his eye flashed with his old fire; but it was only for a 
moment. His face relaxed again, and presently he an- 
swered, very feebly and sadly: 'I don't know, I can't 
tell. Say to General Stuart he must do what he thinks 
best.' And he sank again into sleep." 

To Jackson's fall, at the moment when his victorious 
troops should have been pressing forward with their 
irresistible force to capture Chancellorsville and the 
road to the United States Ford, Henderson and most 
other well-informed critics attribute the failure to de- 
stroy utterly Hooker's army that night. Hill, who 
alone knew anything of his plans, had been seriously 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 287 

wounded also, and Boswell, Jackson's engineer, sent 
to pilot the advancing line to the White House, had 
been killed. The respite gained by his fall enabled 
Hooker to readjust his lines and cover his right with 
the corps of Couch and Slocum, and to send Sickles, 
who had come hurrying back to the strong position 
at Hazel Grove and supported Pleasanton's artil- 
lery posted there, to make about midnight a strong 
assault on Stuart's right where, south of the Plank 
Road, Lane's hard-fought brigade awaited them in the 
woods, while the artillery tore the tree-tops and cut 
down great boughs above their heads. The assault was 
repulsed; but the commanding position of Hazel Grove 
and Fairview Heights, between Jackson's force and 
Lee's, which Jackson would inevitably have carried had 
he been able to make his next assault while the panic 
lasted, was saved. And Lee had to fight again next 
day with all his might to reap the fruits of his audacity. 
Happily for his army, his genius was equal to the 
emergency. 

No one knew so well as Lee the magnitude of the 
disaster that had befallen him in the loss of Jackson. 
He had early gauged his abilities as a soldier. On the 
2d of October, 1862, after the battle of Sharpsburg, 
when the Army of Northern Virginia was reorganized 
in two corps, Lee, in recommending Longstreet and 
Jackson for their respective commands, wrote of 
Jackson: "My opinion of General Jackson has been 
greatly enhanced during this expedition. He is true, 
honest, and brave; has a single eye to the good of 
the service, and spares no exertion to accomplish his 



288 ROBERT E. LEE 

object." His opinion of him had steadily risen. The 
two men thoroughly understood and honored each other 
and were worthy of each other's regard. When Lee 
learned of Jackson's wound, he sent him a warm mes- 
sage. "Give him my affectionate regards, and tell him 
to make haste and get well and come back to me as 
soon as he can. He has lost his left arm, but I have 
lost my right." And later he wrote: ''Any victory 
would be dear at such a price. I know not how to re- 
place him." His formal letter was written on the 
evening of the morrow of Jackson's fall, when having 
carried by assault Hooker's first lines, and supplanted 
him in the position which he had boasted the strongest 
on the planet, he received a note telling him of Jack- 
son's wound. Surrounded by his victorious troops in 
the full tide of their triumph, he penned to his wounded 
lieutenant his reply: 

General: I have just received your note informing 
me that you were wounded. I cannot express my re- 
gret at the occurrence. Could I have directed events, 
I should have chosen, for the good of the country, to 
be disabled in your stead. 

I congratulate you upon the victory which is due 
to your skill and energy. 

Yerf respectfully, your obedient servant, 

R. E. Lee, General. 

No wonder his staff officer, who received his reply 
from him, says that ''as he gave expression to the 
thoughts of his exalted mind, he forgot his genius that 
won the day in his reverence for the generosity that 
refused the glory." 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 289 

Had Hooker been the equal of his antagonists, he 
had a great opportunity on the morning of the' 3d. He 
held with a superior force a position between them 
strongly fortified, and the heights of Hazel Grove and 
Fairview, extending southwardly, cut them in tw^o. 
But he fatuously threw away his advantage. He 
withdrew Sickles from Hazel Grove. Lee sent word 
across the wide gap to renew the assault at the earliest 
moment possible, and when the first light came and 
disclosed the comimanding position of Hazel Grove as 
the key to the situation, Stuart immediately prepared 
to seize it. Swinging his right around and forward to 
get closer to Lee, he began a furious assault, and although 
the strong point of Fairview was long defended with the 
utmost bravery, in the end the Confederate veterans, by 
this time informed of their old commander's fall, and 
charging with the battle-cry, ''Remember Jackson!" 
swept all before them, securing the strong position of 
Hazel Grove. Lee on his side directed the assault with 
confidence. Shaken by the misfortune to his right wing. 
Hooker was already looking to his safety, and was en- 
deavoring to withdraw to a second and closer line, well 
in rear of Chancellorsville, lying above and between 
Fighting Run and Mineral Spring Run and covering 
the United States Ford Road, his line of retreat. 
Heth, on the left, commanding Hill's Division, came 
forward, Anderson and McLaws on the centre and 
the right, where Lee himself in person directed his 
fervid veterans. It was a fierce day, for Hooker's army 
knew that their salvation depended on holding Lee 
back. Fairview, where the enemy was strongly posted 



290 ROBERT E. LEE 

with thirty guns heavily supported, took long to capture. 
For hours the battle raged through the woods, which 
were now aflame for miles and added to the horror of 
the occasion. The utmost courage was shown on both 
sides. Hill, on the left, was repulsed again and again, 
but his second and third lines came forward to aid the 
first line. So resolute was the resistance that at one 
time all three of his lines were mingled together, and 
once word was sent to Stuart that the anamunition 
was exhausted and they would have to fall back; 
to which Stuart replied, as Jackson would have done 
in his place, that they still had the bayonet. Thirty 
guns under the gallant officers, Colonel Thomas H. 
Carter and Colonel Hilary P. Jones, were massed on 
the captured heights of Hazel Grove, and enfiladed 
with deadly effect the lines of the Federals, and Stuart, 
putting himself at the head of his troops and chanting, 
''Old Joe Hooker, won't you come out of the Wilder- 
ness?" led them in a final charge on the entrench- 
ments which swept everything before it. Hooker's 
right having been thus broken, a general advance made 
with unflinching determination swept him back all 
along his line, leaving Lee in possession of Chancellors- 
ville and the whole position which Hooker had held. 

During the morning the Federal commander was 
struck down by a fragment of a shattered pillar of the 
porch of the Chancellor mansion, which was shivered 
by a cannon-ball, where he stood superintending his op- 
erations. The report spread that he was killed, and to 
contradict it, as soon as he recovered consciousness he 
mounted his horse and rode down his lines. He was, 



CHANCELLORSVILLE 291 

however, unable to remain in the saddle, and was in a 
state of semi-consciousness from time to time, the 
command devolving temporarily on Couch. 

As his lines swept forward on Chancellorsville, driv- 
ing the fiercely fighting enemy before them, Lee him- 
self rode forward to encourage his men and to take 
charge of the position. It was the signal for what sol- 
diers rarely see even once in a lifetime. His already 
victorious troops were set wild by his presence, and in 
the midst of the horrors of the field acclaimed him to 
the skies, the wounded adding their feeble voices to 
the cheers of those who still fought the guns. "His 
first care," says one of his staff, "was for the wounded 
of both armies, and he was foremost at the burning 
mansion [of Chancellorsville], where some of them lay." 

It was at this moment that the note reached him 
from Jackson, announcing that he was badly wounded, 
and that he sent him the reply that the victory was 
due to his skill and energy, and that could he have 
directed events, he would have chosen for the good of 
the country to be disabled in his stead. It was char- 
acteristic of Jackson, when his admired commander's 
noble reply was brought to him where he lay wounded, 
to say: "General Lee is very kind, but he should give 
the praise to God." 



CHAPTER XII 

LEE'S AUDACITY— SALEM CHURCH 

HooKER^s first positions had been carried, and Lee was 
ready to assault the second position, where, behind 
the strong fortifications which he had prepared for the 
emergency. Hooker, now much shaken, had made his 
final stand, when information arrived which must have 
discomfited a less resolute and constant mind. The 
news reached Lee that Sedgwick, who had hitherto been 
held on the river by Early, and had recrossed to the 
northern side, had now not only recrossed again, but had 
carried Marye's Heights, driven Early back, and inter- 
vened between him and Lee, and was marching by the 
Plank Road with his force of 30,000 men on Lee's rear. 
In fact. Hooker had sent Sedgwick urgent orders to come 
to his aid. Lee had already 60,000 men in his front in 
line of battle, and if Hooker was stunned and shaken, 
he had at his side such redoubtable fighters as Meade, 
Slocum, Humphreys, Couch, Reynolds, Sickles, and 
Pleasanton, with a host besides. But the mens ceqiia 
in arduis which inspired Lee's breast was equal to this 
difficulty also. Wilcox's Brigade, of Anderson's Divis- 
ion, lying above Banks's Ford at the point nearest to 
Sedgwick's route, was ordered to retard his advance, 
and, to bar his way, McLaws was despatched to Salem 
Church, the point of junction of the road from Banks's 

292 



LEE'S AUDACITY— SALEM CHURCH 293 

Ford with the Plank Road from Chancellorsville to Fred- 
ericksburg. When Sedgwick broke through Early's line 
on the heights of Fredericksburg, Early fell back, cover- 
ing the road to Richmond. Sedgwick then pushed away 
the small force on his right, and was now driving for the 
rear of Lee's right. Wilcox, across the Plank Road, 
fought stubbornly as he fell back to Salem Church, 
where, deploying his men under cover of the woodland, 
McLaws awaited Sedgwick's advance across the open 
fields in his front. The unexpected fire at close range 
was deadly, and advancing two of his brigades at the 
nick of time, he drove Sedgwick's first line back on his 
rear, which had not yet got deployed. " Now ensued," 
says Alexander, " one of the most brilliant and im- 
portant of the minor affairs of the war." The fight, 
though short, was bloody, and Sedgwick, having lost 
something like 5,000 men, was content to make a stand 
on the ridge above Banks's Ford, which he fortified 
strongly. Next morning, in view of the gravity of the 
situation, with 60,000 men in his front and twenty- 
odd thousand but a few miles behind him, Lee him- 
self took personal charge of the operations. Leaving 
"only what remained of Jackson's old corps" — some 
20,000 men — to hold Hooker in his breastworks, he 
took Anderson's three remaining brigades to Salem 
Church, and as soon as Sedgwick's new position could 
be reconnoitred, he ordered the assault. It was a 
brief fight, for it began late, but it was fierce while it 
lasted. Assailing, however, both in front and flank, 
Lee's ragged veterans drove the enemy from their posi- 
tion with a heavy loss, and that night, under cover of 



294 ROBERT E. LEE 

the rain and fog, Sedgwick, who had been left by Hooker 
to fight alone, withdrew across the Rappahannock by 
the nearest ford, leaving Lee to turn again on Hooker, 
penned in his fortifications by Lee's containing force 
of one-third of his numbers/ Lee promptly led back 
to Chancellorsville his victorious brigades to fall on 
Hooker as they had just fallen on his lieutenant. 

Hooker, however, had no stomach for more, and 
that night (the 5th) while Lee was making ready to 
assault him next morning, he, under cover of the storm 
and darkness, retreated across the Rappahannock. He 
was badly demoralized even if his army was not, 
and had allowed the plan which he had elaborated 
with so much satisfaction while safe beyond the Rap- 
pahannock, to be smashed in pieces by Lee when in 
the very act of being carried out. He had lain in his 
breastworks all day, held by a third of his numbers, 
while one of his lieutenants, in the act of executing his 
orders, was being hammered to pieces by Lee, hardly 
a half dozen miles away. No greater exliibition of 
daring genius on the one side and of failure on the 
other was shown during the war, and the charge used 
to be made that Hooker's defeat was due to the fact 
that he was under the influence of liquor; but this 
charge seems to have been disposed of, and it has even 
been suggested that the lack of stimulant was the 
cause of his inertia. The only other excuse that has 
been offered for him is, that he was knocked down and 
stunned during the battle. The true reason is that he 

* Steele's "American Campaigns," p. 351, citing Swintonand E. P. 
Alexander. 



LEE^S AUDACITY— SALEM CHURCH 295 

had been so hopelessly outgeneralled and outfought 
by his opponent, that he had been thrown in a maze, 
in which his brain had almost ceased to act. 

As soon as he was safe across the Rappahannock, 
he issued (on May 6th) a general order to his army 
congratulating it on its achievements. It contained a 
remarkable sentence, which will be found quoted in a 
letter of Lee's, below. His army had, indeed, fought 
admirably. The fault lay with the commander. He 
even wrote to Mr. Lincoln a few days later (May 
13): "Is it asking too much to inquire your opinion 
of my Order No. 49? Jackson is dead," he added, 
"and Lee beats McClellan with his untruthful bul- 
letins." Thus he achieved the distinction of being 
probably the only man in the world who ever charged 
Lee with untruthfulness. We may imagine what was 
the inward thought of that sometimes grim humorist. 
For the Army of the Potomac had lost since Hooker 
crossed the Rappahannock 17,287 officers and men, 
killed and wounded, and 13 guns, and over 6,000 officers 
and men were reported captured or missing. The 
Army of Northern Virginia had also suffered heavily — 
10,277 killed and wounded and about 2,000 captured 
or missing.^ 

Wliat Mr. Lincoln thought of Hooker's order. No. 
49, is possibly not known; what Lee thought is known. 
In a letter to his wife, dated May 20, he writes: "I 
learn that our poor wounded are doing very well. 
General Hooker is airing himself north of the Rappa- 
hannock, and again threatening us with a crossing. It 

* Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson," II, pp. 466, 467. 



296 ROBERT E. LEE 

was reported last night that he had brought his pon- 
toons to the river, but I hear nothing of him this morn- 
ing. I think he will consider it a few days. He has 
published a gratulatory order to his troops, telling 
them they have covered themselves with new laurels, 
have destroyed our stores, communications, thousands 
of our choice troops, captured prisoners in their forti- 
fications, filling the country with fear and conster- 
nation. ^Profoundly loyal and conscious of its own 
strength, the Army of the Potomac will give or decline 
battle whenever its interests or honor may demand. 
It will also be the guardian of its own history and its 
own honor.' All of which is signed by our old friend, 
S. Williams, A. A. G. It shows, at least, he is so far un- 
hurt, and is so far good, but as to the truth of history 
I will not speak. May the great God have you all in 
His holy keeping and soon unite us again. " 

On the 10th of May Stonewall Jackson died of pneu- 
monia, resulting from his wound. He had, for a brief 
period after his arm was amputated on the field, ap- 
peared to be doing well, and hopes were entertained of 
His recovery. By order of General Lee he was removed 
from the proximity of Chancellorsville to the home of 
a Dr. Chandler, near Guinea Station, on the Richmond, 
Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad, some fifty miles 
from Richmond, where he was made comfortable in an 
outhouse which still stands by the railway line, having 
been preserved by the pious care of the women of Vir- 
ginia. 

The question has often been debated whether the 
chief credit for the victory at Chancellorsville should 



LEE'S AUDACITY— SALEM CHURCH 297 

be assigned to Lee or to Jackson. Lee, himself, has 
settled it in a letter which he wrote to Mrs. Jackson, in 
which he states that the responsibility for the flank at- 
tack by Jackson — that is, for the tactics which made it 
possible — necessarily rested on himself. He repeated 
the statement in a letter to his friend, Professor Bledsoe. 
And apart from his conclusive statement, this is the 
judgment of Jackson's biographer. General Henderson. 
Conmaenting on the question as to whether to Lee or 
Jackson the credit was due for the daring plan of the 
campaign against Pope, Henderson says: '^We have 
record of few enterprises of greater daring than that 
which was then decided on; and no matter from whose 
brain it emanated, on Lee fell the burden of the respon- 
sibility; on his shoulders, and on his alone, rested the 
honor of the Confederate arms, the fate of Richmond, 
the independence of the South; and if we may suppose, 
so consonant was the design proposed with the strategy 
which Jackson had already practised, that it was to 
him its inception was due, it is still to Lee that we 
must assign the higher merit. It is easy to conceive; 
it is less easy to execute. But to risk cause and coun- 
try, name and reputation, on a single throw, and to 
abide the issue with unflinching heart, is the supreme 
exhibition of the soldier's fortitude." ^ 

It is, indeed, no disparagement from Jackson's fame 
to declare that, if possible, even more brilliant than 
the afternoon attack on Hooker's right, which routed 
that wing and began the demoralization of his army, 
was the final attack, when Lee, who had left Early 

> Ibid,. II, p. 582. 



298 ROBERT E. LEE 

with only enough men at Fredericksburg to hold Sedg- 
wick in check, learning that Sedgwick had forced a 
crossing and was marching on his rear, turned and, 
leaving only a fragment of his army to hold the shaken 
Hooker in his breastworks, fell on Sedgwick and hurled 
him back across the river, and then, turning again, 
marched on Hooker's position and so awed him that 
he was glad to retreat by night, broken and dismayed, 
across the Rappahannock. 

The victory of Chancellorsville, in which Lee with 
62,000 men and 170 guns completely routed Hooker 
on his own ground, with 130,000 men and 448 guns, 
was, declares Henderson, "the most brilliant feat of 
arms of the century." 

Thus, Lee had destroyed the reputation of more 
generals than any captain had destroyed since Napo- 
leon. 

After Chancellorsville the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia was reorganized in three corps instead of two, 
as formerly. Longstreet commanded the first, as here- 
tofore, now commanding the three divisions of Mc- 
Laws, Pickett, and Hood; and Ewell and A. P. Hill 
were created lieutenant-generals for the purpose, and 
were put in command of the Second and Third Corps, 
respectively, the former comprising the three divisions 
of Rodes, Early, and Johnson; the latter the three 
divisions of Anderson, Heth, and Pender. Thus, Ewell 
became Stonewall Jackson's successor. 

To each corps were attached five battalions of artil- 
lery, two of which were in reserve, the total number 
of guns being 270. The total number of troops of all 



LEE'S AUDACITY— SALEM CHURCH 299 

arms was 68,352, of which 54,356 were infantry, 4,460 
were artillery, and 9,536 were cavalry. "This artillery 
organization was," says Steele in his " American Cam- 
paigns," "the first of its kind ever employed, and it has 
since been adopted by the leading nations of Europe." 
It was a fighting force which in its personnel has 
rarely been equalled in the history of war, composed 
largely of that volunteer soldiery, animated by love of 
country and the spirit of free institutions, which so 
good a critic as Stonewall Jackson declared the best 
soldiers on earth. Lee's confidence in them was dis- 
played when, a little later, he threw them against 
Meade's imposing position on the heights of Gettys- 
burg, in the great strategic move which he was even 
now planning. With the object of guarding the capital 
of the Confederacy against another attempt such as 
he had already frustrated four times, at such cost to 
the South, Lee was ^ow planning carrying the war into 
Africa. To do this with the greatest possible assurance 
of success attainable, it was necessary to have as strong 
an army as possible. Sharpsburg had shown that 
neither gallantry nor brilliant handling of men was 
sufficient to render invasion successful when it brought 
into the field such an army as the North could oppose to 
it. And as moderate as was the size of Lee's army now, 
there was always danger that he might be called on to 
detach a part of his force to protect distant fields. 
Longstreet had been detached before Chancellorsville 
to defend the approaches on the south side of the James, 
in Virginia, and this possibly had enabled Hooker to 
escape across the Rappahannock. Such, indeed, was 



300 ROBERT E. LEE 

Henderson's opinion. Now, the whole seaboard of the 
South was in deep anxiety, and the clamors of the po- 
litical representatives of the threatened regions were 
unremitting. Lee had the responsibility of defending 
Richmond and of conducting the war; but he lacked 
the power to dispose of the troops in the field so as 
best to carry out the plans which he believed necessary 
for the proper performance of his task. As has been 
already said, the form of government of the Confederacy, 
however suited for peace, was inefficient for the con- 
duct of a great revolution. So many conflicting inter- 
ests had to be reconciled, so many selfish ambitions 
reckoned with, so many divergent views harmonized, 
that in times of crisis the exigencies often came and 
passed before the proper authority requisite to pro- 
vide means to meet it could be secured. The present 
crisis furnished an illustration of this unhappy con- 
dition. 

It was plain enough to Lee's clear vision what steps 
should be taken to meet this situation; but he lacked 
the means to nlake his views effectual. He was not 
thwarted and set aside as the commanding generals on 
the Union side were, but he was impeded and hindered 
in his plans by the action of the government, who, 
whatever the emergency, felt called on to consult the 
views of those they represented. He wrote on June 
13 to the Secretary of War: ''You can realize the diffi- 
culty of operating in any offensive movement with 
this army, if it has to be divided to cover Richmond, 
It seems to me useless to attempt it with the force 
against it. You will have seen its effective strength 



LEE'S AUDACITY— SALEM CHURCH 301 

by the last returns." Mr. Davis wrote him, a few days 
later, that the attempt was being made to organize a 
force for local defence, and that he hoped it would be 
possible to defend the city without drawing from the 
force in the field more heavily than may be necessary 
for the duty of outposts and reconnoissances. But 
General Lee had a bolder and loftier object hi view 
than the mere defence of Richmond. He would by 
his strategy not only relieve Richmond, but possibly 
secure peace. And he saw clearly that the chances of 
peace were dependent on his success, as he saw that 
his chances of success were dwindling with his dwin- 
dling resources. 

''At this distance," he wrote Mr. Davis, ''I can see 
no benefit to be derived from maintaining a larger 
force on the southern coast during the unhealthy 
months of summer and autumn, and I think that a 
part at least of the troops in North Carolina, and of 
those under General Beauregard, can be employed at 
this time to great advantage in Virginia. If an army 
could be organized under the conamand of General 
Beauregard, and pushed forward to Culpeper Court 
House, threatening Washington from that direction, it 
would not only effect a diversion most favorable for 
this army, but would, I think, relieve us of any appre- 
hension of an attack upon Richmond during our ab- 
sence. ... If success should attend the operations of 
this army — and what I now suggest would greatly in- 
crease the probability of that result — we might even 
hope to compel the recall of some of the enemy's troops 
from the West. . . . The good effects of beginaing to 



302 ROBERT E. LEE 

assemble an army at Culpeper Court House would, 
I think, soon become apparent, and the movement 
might be increased in importance as the result might 
appear to justify." 

And again, under date of the 25th of June, to Presi- 
dent Davis, he wrote: '^You will see that apprehension 
for the safety of Washington and their own territory 
has aroused the Federal Government and people to 
great exertions, and it is incumbent upon us to call 
forth all our energies. In addition to the 100,000 
troops called for by President Lincoln to defend the 
frontier of Pennsylvania, you will see that he is con- 
centrating other organized forces in Maryland. It is 
stated in the papers that they are all being withdrawn 
from Suffolk, and according to General Buckner's re- 
port, Burnside and his corps are recalled from Ken- 
tucky. ... I think this should liberate the troops in 
the Carolinas, and enable Generals Buckner and Bragg 
to accomplish something in Ohio. It is plain that if all 
the Federal army is concentrated upon this it will re- 
sult in our accomplishing nothing and being compelled 
to return to Virginia. If the plan that I suggested 
the other day, of organizing an army, even in effigy, 
under General Beauregard at Culpeper Court House, 
can be carried into effect, much relief will be afforded. 
If even the brigades in Virginia and North Carolina, 
which Generals D. H. Hill and Elzey think cannot be 
spared, were ordered there at once, and General Beau- 
regard were sent there, if he had to return to South 
Carolina, it would do more to protect both States from 
marauding expeditions of the enemy than anything 



LEE'S AUDACITY— SALEM CHURCH 303 

else. I have not sufficient troops to maintain my com- 
munications, and therefore have to abandon them. I 
think I can throw General Hooker's army across the 
Potomac, and draw troops from the South, embarrass- 
ing their plan of campaign in a measure, if I can do 
nothing more and have to return." ^ 

It was a tragic situation, this general, on whose genius 
hung the fate of the Codfederacy, begging in vain for 
an army, "even in effigy," to post on his flank and 
afford him some relief while he pursued the strategy 
which alone could save his cause. 

> Colonel W. H. Taylor's "General Lee," p. 216. 



CHAPTER XIII 

GETTYSBURG 

Possibly, it may appear to some a fault in Lee as a 
soldier that lie accounted the abilities of his enemy at 
less than their true value. Study of the war must lead 
to the conviction that neither courage nor fortitude was 
the monopoly of either side. The men who withstood 
at Gaines's Mill and Malvern Hill the fierce charges 
of the Southern infantry; the men who marched down 
the rolling plain of Second Manassas against Stonewall 
Jackson's lines of flame, and dashed, like the surging 
sea, wave upon wave, on Lee's iron ranks at Antietam; 
the men who charged impregnable defences at Marye's 
Heights; the men who climbed the slippery steeps of 
Chattanooga and swept the crimson plain of Franklin; 
the men who maintained their positions under the 
leaden sleet of the Wilderness and seized the Bloody 
Angle at Spottsylvania; the men who died at Cold 
Harbor, rank on rank, needed to ask no odds for valor 
of any troops on earth, not even of the men who followed 
Lee. 

In a recent discussion of this subject, the philosoph- 
ical Charles Francis Adams, himself a veteran of the 
Army of the Potomac, whose laurels were won in op- 
posing Lee, quotes with approval Lee's proud declara- 

304 



GETTYSBURG 305 

tion that "there never were such men in an army 
before. They will go anywhere and do anything if 
properly led." ''And for myself," he adds, "I do not 
think the estimate thus expressed was exaggerated. 
Speaking deliberately, having faced some portions of 
the Army of Northern Virginia at the time, and having 
reflected much on the occurrences of that momentous 
period, I do not believe that any more formidable or 
better organized and animated force was ever set in 
motion than that which Lee led across the Potomac in 
the early summer of 1863. It was essentially an army 
of fighters — men who individually or in the mass 
could be depended upon for any feat of arms in the 
power of mere mortals to accomplish. They would 
blench at no danger. This Lee from experience knew. 
He had tested them; they had full confidence in him." ^ 

Lee's error, such as it was, lay not in overrating his 
own weapon, but in undervaluing the larger weapon of 
his antagonist. Yet, if this underrating of his enemy 
was a fault, it was a noble one; and how often it led 
to victory! Lee's success was due largely to his splen- 
did audacity. 

If, in attacking the redoubtable forces of Meade on 
the heights of Gettysburg, he overestimated the ability 
of that army of sixty thousand Southern men who wore 
the gray, who can wonder? In their rags and tatters, 
ill-shod and ill-armed, they were the flower of the 
South. Had he not seen them on every field since 
Mechanicsville? Seen them, under his masterly tactics 
and inspiring eye, sweep McClellan's mighty army from 

' Address at Lexington, Va., cited ante. 



306 ROBERT E. LEE 

the very gates of Richmond? Seen them send Pope, 
routed and demorahzed, to the shelter of the fortifica- 
tions around Alexandria? Seen them repel McClellan's 
furious charges on the field of Antietam, and hold him 
at bay with a fresh army at his back? Seen them drive 
Burnside's valorous men back to their entrenchments? 
Seen them roll Hooker's great army up as a scroll and 
hurl it back across the Rappahannock? What was 
disparity of numbers to him? What strength of posi- 
tion? His greatest victories had been plucked by dar- 
ing, which hitherto fortune had proved the wisest of 
calculation, from the jaws of apparent impossibility. 
Besides, who knew so well as he the necessity of strik- 
ing such a blow? The South-west was being gradu- 
ally conquered. Grant's brilliant work before Vicks- 
burg had almost completed what Fort Donelson and 
Shiloh had begun. Vicksburg, the last stronghold of 
the Confederacy on the Mississippi, was in the last 
throes of a fatal siege, and, on the same day that Lee 
faced his fate at the heights of Gettysburg, fell before the 
indomitable Grant, and the Confederate South was cut 
in two. His delivering battle here under such condi- 
tions has been often criticised. He is charged with hav- 
ing violated a canon of war. He replied to his critics 
once that even so dull a man as himself could see clearly 
enough his mistakes after they were committed. 

This battle has been fought over so often that it is 
not necessary to go fully over its details now, and yet 
in a volume which deals with Lee's military genius 
some account is necessary of the great battle which 
appears to have been the turning point of the great 



GETTYSBURG 307 

civil strife. Gettysburg was only one factor in the 
unbroken chain of proof to establish his boldness and 
his resolution. Southern historians have unanimously 
placed the chief responsibility for his defeat on Long- 
street, whose tendency to be dilatory and obstinate 
has been noted in connection with the fields of Seven 
Pines, Frazier's Farm, and Second Manassas, and whose 
slowness and surliness now probably cost Lee this battle, 
and possibly cost the South, if not its independence, at 
least the offer of honorable terms. And in this estimate 
of him many other competent critics concur. ''Lee," 
says Henderson, in his "Life of Stonewall Jackson," 
"lost the battle of Gettysburg because he allowed his 
second in command to argue instead of marching." ^ It 
is impossible in reading his writings not to be struck by 
his self-esteem, and sheer jealousy is often written plain 
on his pages. That he should have envied Jackson 
and hated Early is perhaps not to be wondered at. 
But that he should have assailed Lee with what ap- 
pears not far from rancor can only be attributed to 
jealousy. Lee, we know, held him in high esteem, 
speaking of him as his "old war horse," and was too 
magnanimous ever to give countenance to the furious 
clamor which later assailed his sturdy if opinionated 
and bull-headed lieutenant. It was a magnanimity 
which Longstreet ill requited when long afterward — 
years after Lee's death — he attempted to reply to his 
critics. Longstreet seems, indeed, to have been not 
unlike a bull, ponderous and dull until aroused, but 
once aroused by the sight of blood, terrible in his fury, 

* " Life of Stonewall Jackson," II, p. 488. 



308 ROBERT E. LEE 

and a ferocious fighter. But the question here is, did 
Lee err or not in fighting the battle. 

Longstreet with two divisions had been absent from 
Lee's army since soon after the battle of Fredericks- 
burg. He had at his request been sent to south-side 
Virginia to defend the line of the Blackwater against 
an advance from Norfolk, on the south side of the 
James. In anticipation of Hooker's advance around 
Lee's left, he had been ordered to rejoin Lee, but ''his 
movements were so delayed that though the battle of 
Chancellorsville did not occur until many days after 
he was expected to join, his force was absent when it 
occurred." ^ This, too, when his instructions had been 
"repeated with urgent insistence." 

Longstreet declared long afterward that he now had 
a plan of his own. He not infrequently claims the 
credit for the plans acted on if they proved successful. 
His idea was that the proper strategy would be for 
him to join Joseph E. Johnston, then near Tullahoma, 
so as to enable him to crush Rosecrans; then march 
through Tennessee and Kentucky and threaten Ohio. 
This view he urged both on Mr. Seddon, the Confederate 
Secretary of War, and on Lee himself. Neither acceded 
to his plan — mainly, he says, because it would force 
Lee to divide his army.^ Assuredly a sound enough 
reason. His account of his interview with Lee has 
been noted by a thoughtful student of the Gettysburg 
campaign, himself a gallant participant in the battle, 
as reflecting Longstreet's mental attitude both toward 

' " Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government." 
'Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. V, p. 55. 



GETTYSBURG 309 

the campaign and toward Lee/ It was, at least, not 
one of cordial subordination and support. 

In brief, the battle of Gettysburg came of the neces- 
sity to '^ yield to a stronger power than General Burn- 
side." Feeling the imperative necessity of relieving 
Virginia of the burden that was crushing her to the 
earth, Lee determined, as the summer of 1863 drew near, 
to manoeuvre Hooker from his impregnable position on 
the Stafford Heights, and to transfer the theatre of 
war to Northern soil. 

For this reason Lee, boldly flanking Hooker, who, 
now secure on the further side of the Rappahannock, 
was boasting still, marched his army into Maryland and 
Pennsylvania, not for conquest, but for subsistence, 
and to employ once more, at need, the strategy which 
he knew would compel the withdrawal of the forces 
still threatening Richmond. 

It testifies his foresight that he had already pre- 
dicted that a pitched battle would probably be fought 
at York, or at Gettysburg. 

Yet, when the time came, Lee's meeting with ]\Ieade's 
army at the latter place was to some extent a surprise to 
him; for his able and gallant cavalry commander, Stuart, 
on whom he had relied to keep him informed touching 
the enemy, had been led by the ardor of a successful raid 
further afield than had been planned, and the presence 
of Meade's army in force was unsuspected until too late 
to decline battle.^ Heth's Division had sought the 

^"Review of the Gettysburg Campaign," by Colonel David Gregg 
Mcintosh, p. 9. 

^ That Stuart was in any way responsible for this is denied by Colonel 
John S. Mosby in his "Stuart in the Gettysburg Campaign." 



310 ROBERT E. LEE 

place for imperatively needed supplies, and found the 
Union troops holding it, and a battle was precipitated. 
Lee's plan of battle failed here, but the student of war 
knows how it failed and why. It failed because his 
lieutenants failed, and his orders were not carried out 
— possibly because he called on his intrepid army for 
more than human strength was able to achieve. ''Had 
I had Jackson at Gettysburg," he once said, "I should, 
so far as man can judge, have won that battle." 

It was the first week of June when Lee, leaving A. P. 
Hill to occupy the lines at Fredericksburg and cover 
Richmond, withdrew the major portion of his force to 
Culpeper, Ewell leading and Longstreet following. Lee 
moved secretly, sending Ewell by Spottsylvania Court 
House to escape observation; but observation balloons 
and spies discovered something of his movements to 
Hooker, who notified his government and without 
avail asked leave to "pitch into his rear." He crossed 
Sedgwick over the Rappahannock, on June 5, to dem- 
onstrate against Hill's right on the River Road to 
Richmond; but as Lee, after making a personal recon- 
noissance of the position, recognized the move as 
a feint and paid little attention to it, he withdrew 
Sedgwick again. Hooker now knew that Lee was 
beginning some movement, but thought it was merely 
a cavalry raid, with possibly a heavy column of in- 
fantry in support, and he sent Pleasanton with his 
cavalry, "stiffened by about 3,000 infantry," to dis- 
perse and destroy the cavalry forces in the vicinity of 
Culpeper. At Culpeper Lee waited for a few days and 
rested and reviewed his cavalry. Lee wrote his wife 



GETTYSBURG 311 

of the review. ''It was a splendid sight," he said; ''the 
men and horses looked well. They had recuperated 
since last fall. Stuart was in all his glory. Your sons 
and nephews are well and flourishing. The country 
here looks very green and pretty, notwithstanding the 
ravages of war. What a beautiful world God in His 
loving-kindness to His creatures has given us. What a 
shame that men endowed with reason and knowledge 
of right should mar His gifts." The day following this 
review, a short distance away on the rolling plain 
above Kelly's Ford, Stuart and Pleasanton, the latter, 
as stated, "stiffened by about 3,000 infantry," fought 
possibly the greatest cavalry battle that has ever taken 
place. Alexander's artillery was moved over in that 
direction, to be ready at need; but was kept in con- 
cealment, as Lee did not wish the presence of his 
army to be known. After several hours of stiff 
fighting, Pleasanton was driven back across the Rap- 
pahannock with the loss of 500 prisoners, 3 pieces of 
artillery, and several colors, having himself captured 
a good number of prisoners. Hooker, as at Chancel- 
lorsville, found this a cause of congratulation, and 
wrote a report quite in the tone of a victor. Pleasan- 
ton, he reported, "pressed Stuart three miles, capt- 
uring 200 prisoners and a battle-flag. Our cavalry 
made many hand-to-hand combats, always driving the 
enemy before them." 

Lee's plan now was to sweep over the mountains 
and on through the valley of Virginia, clearing it of 
Milroy's army, which was proving a pest there, cross 
over into Maryland, and, passing through that State, 



312 ROBERT E. LEE 

invade Pennsylvania and threaten at once Harrisburg, 
Baltimore, and Washington. This, he hoped, would 
lead to peace, or, failing this, would at least "throw 
Hooker's army across the Potomac." 

Before leaving Culpeper, Lee, on the 10th of June, 
wrote President Davis the following letter, which shows 
how clearly he saw the need of making peace : 

Mr. President: I beg leave to bring to your attention 
a subject with reference to which I have thought that 
the course pursued by writers and speakers among us 
has had a tendency to interfere with our success. I 
refer to the manner in which the demonstration of a 
desire for peace at the North has been received in our 
country. 

I think there can be no doubt that journalists and 
others at the South, to whom the Northern people 
naturally look for a reflection of our opinions, have 
met these indications in such wise as to weaken the 
hands of the advocates of a pacific policy on the part 
of the Federal Government, and give much encourage- 
ment to those who urge a continuance of the war. 

Recent political movements in the United States 
and the comments of influential newspapers upon them 
have attracted my attention particularly to this sub- 
ject, which I deem not unworthy of the consideration 
of your Excellency, nor inappropriate to be adverted 
to by me in view of its connection with the situation 
of military affairs. 

Conceding to our enemies the superiority claimed 
by them in numbers, resources, and all the means and 
appliances for carrying on the war, we have no right 
to look for exemption from the military consequences 
of a vigorous use of these advantages, except by such 
deliverance as the mercy of Heaven may accord to the 



GETTYSBURG 313 

courage of our soldiers, the justice of our cause, and 
the constancy and prayers of our people. While mak- 
ing the most we can of the means of resistance we 
possess, and gratefully accepting the measure of success 
with which God has blessed our efforts as an earnest 
of His approval and favor, it is nevertheless the part 
of wisdom to carefully measure and husband our 
strength, and not to expect from it more than in the 
ordinary course of affairs it is capable of accomplish- 
ing. We should not, therefore, conceal from ourselves 
that our resources in men are constantly diminishing, 
and the disproportion in this respect between us and 
our enemies, if they continue united in their efforts 
to subjugate, is steadily augmenting. The decrease 
of the aggregate of this army as disclosed by the re- 
turns affords an illustration of this fact. Its effect- 
ive strength varies from time to time, but the falling 
off in its aggregate shows that its ranks are grow- 
ing weaker and that its losses are not supplied by 
recruits. 

Under these circumstances we should neglect no 
honorable means of dividing and weakening our ene- 
mies, that they may feel some of the difficulties ex- 
perienced by ourselves. It seems to me that the most 
effectual mode of accomplishing this object now within 
our reach is to give all the encouragement we can, con- 
sistently with truth, to the rising peace party of the 
North. 

Nor do I think we should, in this connection, make 
nice distinction between those who declare for peace 
unconditionally and those who advocate it as a means 
of restoring the Union, however much we may prefer 
the former. 

We should bear in mind that the friends of peace at 
the North must make concessions to the earnest desire 
that exists in the minds of their countrymen for a res- 



314 ROBERT E. LEE 

toration of the Union, and that to hold out such a re- 
sult as an inducement is essential to the success of their 
party. 

Should the belief that peace will bring back the Union 
become general the war would no longer be supported; 
and that, after all, is what we are interested in bringing 
about. When peace is proposed to us it will be time 
enough to discuss its terms, and it is not the part of 
prudence to spurn the proposition in advance merely 
because those who wish to make it believe, or affect 
to believe, that it will result in bringing us back to 
the Union. We entertain no such apprehensions, nor 
doubt that the desire of our people for a distinct and 
independent national existence will prove as steadfast 
under the influence of peaceful measures as it has shown 
itself in the midst of war. 

If the views I have indicated meet the approval of 
your Excellency, you will best know how to give effect 
to them. Should you deem them inexpedient or im- 
practicable, I think you will nevertheless agree with 
me that we should at least carefully abstain from meas- 
ures or expressions that tend to discourage any party 
whose purpose is peace. 

With this statement of my own opinion on the sub- 
ject, the length of which you will excuse, I leave to 
your better judgment to determine the proper course 
to be pursued. 

I am, with great respect. 

Your obedient servant, 

R. E. Lee, General. 

The day after the fight at Kelly's Ford, Lee sent 
Ewell forward by Mount Royal to the Shenandoah 
Valley, which he immediately cleared of the enemy. 
Longstreet was directed to operate so as to embarrass 



GETTYSBURG 315 

Hooker as to Lee's movements, and keep him east of 
the Blue Ridge, at least until Hill could arrive and get 
in touch with Ewell, and Stuart was set to screen Lee's 
movements to the west of the Blue Ridge from Hooker, 
posted to the east of the Blue Ridge, covering the 
southerly approaches to Washington. 

As Lee anticipated, his strategy drew Hooker back 
toward the Potomac, and Longstreet was moved for- 
ward on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, while 
A. P. Hill followed Ewell over the mountains into the 
valley of Virginia, the whole being screened by Stuart's 
cavalry. 

As late as the 12th Hooker wrote Governor Dix that 
"all of Lee's army, so far as I know, is extended along 
the immediate bank of the Rappahannock from Hamil- 
ton's Crossing to Culpeper. A. P. Hill's Corps is on his 
right, below Fredericksburg; E well's Corps joins his 
left, reaching to the Rapidan, and beyond that river is 
Longstreet's Corps." Two days from this time Ewell, 
who had crossed the Blue Ridge on the 12th, captured 
Winchester, with some 4,000 prisoners and 29 guns, 
together with the vast stores collected there, and barely 
missed capturing Milroy himself, who escaped with a 
small portion of the garrison. 

On the night of the 13th, Hooker, knowing that Lee 
was engaged in some new enterprise, but not know- 
ing yet what it was, withdrew from before Fredericks- 
burg and headed for the line of the Orange and Alex- 
andria Railroad, to cover Washington. Next day Hill, 
no longer needed on the south bank of the Rappahan- 
nock, marched for Culpeper en route for the Valley, 



316 ROBERT E. LEE 

to overtake Lee's other corps. Lee had thus once 
more manceuvred a great army from an attack on 
Richmond to the defence of Washington. Hooker was 
still in a maze, and sent his cavahy westward to force 
Lee 'Ho show his hand, if he had any in this part of 
the country." To prevent this "a, stiff fight" occurred 
on the 17th, at Aldie, between Fitz Lee and Gregg, and 
two days later Pleasanton, ''stiffened by an infantry 
division," flanked Stuart at Middleburg and forced him 
beyond Upperville. Longstreet sent a division to rein- 
force Stuart, and on the 23d Lee wrote Mr. Davis that 
"the attempts to penetrate the mountains have been 
successfully resisted by General Stuart with the cav- 
alry," and that the enemy had retired to Aldie. 

By the middle of the month (June) Lee's advanced 
corps had crossed the Potomac, and Longstreet was 
ordered soon afterward to do the same, while Stuart 
was left to impede Hooker should he attempt to follow 
across the Potomac, it being left to Stuart's discretion 
whether to cross east or west of the Blue Ridge; but 
on crossing he was to cover the right of the army. On 
the 22d of June, Lee wrote from Berryville, where 
A. P. Hill had just arrived, directing Ewell to move 
forward from Shepherdstown toward the Susquehanna, 
taking the route by Emmetsburg, Chambersburg, and 
McConnellsburg, keeping his trains on the centre route, 
and notifying him that Stuart had been directed, if 
possible, to place himself with three brigades of cav- 
alry on his right, and Imboden had been ordered to 
his left. Ewell was told "if Harrisburg comes within 
your means capture it." On the same day Lee wrote 



GETTYSBURG 317 

Stuart, expressing concern lest the enemy should '^ steal 
a march on us and get across the Potomac before we 
are aware/' and authorizing him, if he found the enemy 
moving northward, to leave two brigades to guard the 
Blue Ridge and take care of his rear, to move with his 
other three brigades into Maryland, place himself in 
communication with Ewell, and guard his right flank, 
keeping him informed of the enemy's movements and 
collecting supplies. This letter was forwarded through 
Longstreet, who wrote Stuart, advising his leaving by 
Hopewell Gap and passing in the rear of the enemy, so 
as not to disclose Lee's plans. Stuart mentioned that 
Lee had authorized him to use his discretion. 

On the 23d Lee wrote Stuart again, confirming the 
above, but suggesting that should Hooker appear to 
be moving northward, Stuart had better withdraw to 
the west of the Blue Ridge and cross the Potomac at 
Shepherdstown. He however stated that Stuart would 
be able to judge; he could pass around Hooker's wing 
and cross the river east of the mountains. "But in 
either case," he adds, '^ after crossing the river you 
must move on and feel the right of Ewell's troops. . . . 
I think the sooner you cross into Maryland, after to- 
morrow, the better." Stuart sent Colonel Mosby on 
a scout to learn if Hooker were crossing the Potomac, 
and received on the 24th a report that no signs of 
movement were found. This report was to be sent 
to General Lee. He moved that night to pass around 
Hooker's rear and cross the river at Seneca Ford. 
He had intended to pass through Haymarket and on 
through Hooker's army; but finding Hancock, across 



318 ROBERT E. LEE 

his path in the Bull Run Mountains, he bore farther 
eastward and passed through Fairfax Station. The 
detour delayed his crossing of the river till the night 
of the 27th, when he learned that Hooker had crossed 
at Edward's Ferry on the 25th and 26th, and was now 
at Poolesville, Md., en route for Frederick. 

Meantime, Lee had passed the rest of his army to the 
north side of the Potomac, and Hooker's entire army 
was between Lee and his cavalry. Hill had crossed at 
Shepherdstown, and Longstreet at Williamsport, on the 
24th, the day that Stuart received the report to transmit 
to Lee that no signs of Hooker's movement had been 
found. The two corps had united at Hagerstown, and 
on the 27th were near Chambersburg, secure in the 
conviction that Hooker was probably still on the south 
side of the Potomac or Stuart would have notified 
them.^ Here Lee issued his famous order to his army, 
admonishing them to respect non-combatants and 
private property, and remember that the inhabitants 
were their fellow citizens. Ewell, marching by Hagers- 
town and Chambersburg, had reached Carlisle on the 
27th with two of his divisions, the third, under Early, 
having been sent to York. Early was sent eastward 
across the South Mountains and through Gettysburg, 
York, and Wrightsville, to cross the Susquehanna by 
the Columbia bridge and move up the north bank of 
the river on Harrisburg. Crossing the South Moun- 
tains by the Chambersburg pike. Early passed through 
Gettysburg on the 26th and moved on through York 
to Wrightsville, respectively twenty-eight and forty 

' Lee's report, dated 20th January, 1864. 



GETTYSBURG 319 

miles from Gettysburg, and was preparing to cross the 
river when he received orders to rejoin Lee. Ewell, at 
CarHsle, was about to set out for Harrisburg, whose 
defences were already being studied by his engineers. 
It was not until the next night (28th) that Lee learned 
through a scout that momentous events had taken 
place in the past few days along the Potomac; that 
Hooker had crossed the river; had then been relieved 
and superseded by Meade, and that Meade was now con- 
centrating in his rear between him and Washington. 
Hooker, on crossing the Potomac, had telegraphed Hal- 
leck that he wanted the garrison from Harper's Ferry 
and Maryland Heights — some 10,000 men — and on Hal- 
leck's refusing, on the ground that Harper's Ferry was 
the key to the situation, he had replied that the key was 
of no use when the lock was broken, and asked that 
his resignation be accepted. This was promptly done — 
the authorities, possibly, not being sorry to get rid of 
another ill-starred commander — and to the surprise of 
many, who had expected Couch or Reynolds to succeed 
him, Meade was not only placed in command, but was 
given the troops which were refused Hooker. Meade, 
bearing to the eastward and keeping Washington and 
Baltimore covered, continued to march northward tow- 
ard where Lee was throwing Pennsylvania into a panic. 
Extended as he was over nearly fifty miles in a hostile 
country, it behooved Lee to get his army together before 
he attacked or was attacked by an enemy which so 
largely outnumbered him, and he proceeded to do so. 

Stuart meantime, acting in the discretion accorded 
him by Lee, had passed in the rear of Hooker and 



320 ROBERT E. LEE 

crossed the Potomac at Seneca, barely a dozen miles 
from Washington, and had moved on northward be- 
tween Hooker and Washington, capturing a great 
wagon-train at Rockville, cutting up the railway and 
telegraph, and drawing after him all the Federal cav- 
alry available. His march was made with his usual 
swiftness, but as the Federal army was between him 
and the Confederate columns, he did not know where 
the main army was until the night of the 1st of July, 
when, having ridden around Gettysburg, he reached 
Carlisle on his way to the Susquehanna. That day 
Lee's army had fought the first day's battle of Gettys- 
burg. Leaving Carlisle at once, Stuart rode for Gettys- 
burg, where he arrived next afternoon. 

While Stuart was riding around the Federal army, 
Lee was meeting the new situation presented to him 
by the unexpected proximity of Meade's army on 
his flank. On learning that Meade was so near, Lee 
promptly decided to concentrate his forces on the east 
of the mountains. Orders were issued immediately 
for his troops to turn and concentrate about Cash- 
town or Gettysburg. Ewell received the order at 
Carlisle as he was about to set out for Harrisburg, his 
instructions recalling him first to Chambersburg and 
then 'Ho proceed to Cashtown or Gettysburg, as cir- 
cumstances might dictate," and Hill was ordered to 
Cashtown, to the north-westward of Gettysburg, to 
which place a turnpike ran, with Longstreet following 
next day. Ewell immediately turned back; on the 
night of the 29th his trains were passing through 
Chambersburg, his three divisions moving on Gettys- 



GETTYSBURG 321 

burg from the north. On the same day that Ewell ar- 
rived at Carhsle, the 27th, Longstreet and A. P. Hill 
reached the vicinity of Chambersburg. Up to this time 
no information had come from any source of the ap- 
proach of the Federal army, and it was not until the 
night of the 28th that Lee was apprised by one of his 
scouts that the army had not only crossed the Potomac 
several days before but was now near South Mountain. 
A. P. Hill was, on the 29th, encamped on the road 
from Chambersburg to Gettysburg, and that day he 
moved Heth's Division from Fayetteville, where Ander- 
son was left, to Cashtown, on the eastern side of the 
South Mountain, eight miles from Gettysburg, while 
Pender's Division followed to the western foot of the 
mountain. 

On the morning of the 30th, Pettigrew's Brigade, of 
Heth's Division, was ordered to the little town of 
Gettysburg, a few miles southward, to get shoes and 
other supplies, of which it stood sorely in need, and 
found it occupied by the enemy, who were not known 
to be nearer than fifteen miles away. Pettigrew with- 
drew and bivouacked. The rest of Lee's army, on the 
night of the 30th, was placed as follows: Johnson's 
Division, of Ewell's Corps (four brigades — Jones's, 
Williams's, Walker's, and Stuart's), was near Fayette- 
ville, on the Chambersburg Pike, seventeen miles 
north-west of Gettysburg; Early's Division, with four 
brigades (Gordon's, Hays's, Hoke's, and Smith's), 
was at East Berlin, on the York Pike, fifteen miles 
north-east of Gettysburg; Rodes's Division, five bri- 
gades (Daniels's, Ramseur's, Iverson's, O'Neal's, and 



322 ROBERT E. LEE 

Doles's), was at Heidlersburg, ten miles north of 
Gettysburg. Of Hill's Corps, Heth's Division, three 
brigades (Archer's, Davis's, and Brockenborough's), 
was at Cashtown, eight miles north-west of Gettys- 
burg; Pender's Division, four brigades (Thomas's, 
Lane's, Scales's, and McGowan's), was on the west 
side of the mountain, a few miles farther away, while 
Anderson's Division, beyond them, was at Fayetteville, 
seventeen miles from Gettysburg. 

Longstreet, leaving Pickett's Division at Chambers- 
burg to guard the rear, moved his other divisions 
(Hood's and McLaws's) on the 30th to Greenwood, 
fourteen miles north-west of Gettysburg, where Lee 
had his head-quarters, and ''bivouacked about 2 p. m." 
Lee, at Greenwood, wrote on the 30th, ordering Im- 
boden to take Pickett's place, so that the latter could 
move next day to Cashtown, where he proposed to 
establish his head-quarters. He had no new informa- 
tion as to the movements of the Federal army, and 
was sending out scouts to find Stuart. Stuart on the 
same day was riding northward from Westminster, 
Md., toward Hanover, Pa., on the way to Harrisburg. 

On the day following (July 1), while Hill and Ewell 
were fighting the first day's battle about the town of 
Gettysburg, Longstreet's two divisions were moved for- 
ward, and they bivouacked that night on Willoughby 
Run, only three or four miles from the battle-field. 

On the same day that Lee was moving southward 
toward Gettysburg, the 30th, Meade was moving 
northward along lines which would bring him nearer 
to Lee's route, and would at the same time cover 



GETTYSBURG 323 

Washington and Baltimore. That day he established 
his head-quarters at Taney town, Md., thirteen miles 
south of Gettysburg, having moved from Frederick, 
and set his engineers to work to reconnoitre-and prepare 
defences for a pitched battle along the line of Pipe 
Creek, a few miles to the south of Taneytown. Reyn- 
olds, who commanded his left, consisting of the First, 
Third, and Eleventh Corps, with Buford's cavalry, was 
sent forward toward Gettysburg to find and draw Lee 
on to a battle on the ground which Meade had chosen 
along Pipe Creek. The Fifth Corps was moved toward 
Hanover, fourteen miles south-east of Gettysburg; 
the Twelfth Corps was pushed forward that night on 
the Baltimore Pike to within ten miles of Gettysburg; 
the Second Corps was at Queentown, and the Sixth 
Corps was at Manchester, thirty-four or thirty-five 
miles to the south-east, half way to Baltimore. On 
the evening of the 30th, Reynolds had pushed forward 
to Gettysburg, through which two of Buford's bri- 
gades of cavalry (Devin's and Gamble's) had passed to 
picket the roads from the north, while that night the 
First Corps bivouacked five miles south of the town, 
and the Third and Eleventh Corps bivouacked at Em- 
metsburg, ten miles south of the town. 

It seems clear that while each side knew that the 
other was not far distant, and that a great battle was 
imminent, neither anticipated that the battle would 
be fought at Gettysburg. 

The battle-field of Gettysburg lies in a piedmont 
region, in a fertile, rolling country of farms and ham- 
lets, for the most part open, but interspersed with 



324 ROBERT E. LEE 

woodland, divided by ridges running mainly north and 
south, with streams running between them, and in 
places broken by shaip though not high spurs, covered 
with boulders and clad with forest. The little town 
which gives its name to the battle lies on the slope at 
the northern end of one of these ridges, which rises 
somewhat abruptly at its back, and is crowned there 
by the cemetery from which it takes its name. This 
ridge throws out a curving spur to the eastward, known 
as Gulp's Hill, around which runs Rock Creek, but the 
main backbone of the ridge extends south by south-west 
for some two miles, and after sinking in the middle, rises 
again, and ends in two sharp, wooded spurs which are 
known respectively as Little- and Big Roundtop. The 
ground between the end of the eastern curve — Gulp's 
Hill — and the southern portion of the ridge is much 
broken, but is traversed by roads which afford ready 
access from one to the other. On either side east and 
west of this ridge, at the distance of a mile or so, and 
divided from it by open valleys filled with farms and 
orchards, lie other ridges; that on the west was known 
as Seminary Ridge, from the Lutheran Seminary, which 
rose near its northern end. 

On the morning of the 1st of July, the nearer troops 
to Gettysburg on both sides were set in motion for that 
place, while those farther away continued their gen- 
eral line of march, leading to the concentration about 
Gettysburg, which had been ordered. Hill, moving 
on Gettysburg from the westward, sent word of his 
movement to Ewell, who was some miles farther away, 
and who likewise set his troops in motion. . Lee's orders 



SCALE OF MILES 




pp'W)?SKIN<aTOM 



Gettysburg and Vicinity 



GETTYSBURG 325 

to his lieutenants were to confine any action which the 
meeting with the enemy might necessitate to a recon- 
noissance, and not bring on a general engagement. This 
was because of the dispersed condition of his own army 
and his ignorance of the disposition of the enemy. 
General Lee arrived at Cashtown on the morning of 
July 1, whence Heth had been sent that morning by 
Hill with orders to ascertain the force of the enemy; 
but if he found infantry in force to report the fact 
and not force an engagement. Meade's orders to his 
lieutenants were to fall back, if pressed, to the position 
which he had selected north of Emmeteburg, where 
he would probably be in a position to fight a defensive 
battle. As late as 12.30 on the 1st, his chief of staff 
wrote Buford, whose cavalry was then engaged beyond 
Gettysburg, to withdraw to Frizzelburg. At this time 
Hill had two divisions up, and the third not far in the 
rear, and Ewell was on his way. 

Heth's Division, moving south-eastwardly along the 
Chambersburg Pike from Cashtown, eight miles away, 
toward nine o'clock came on Buford's pickets about a 
mile and a half from Gettysburg, and on these being 
driven in, encountered his dismounted cavalry, well 
posted on both sides of the road, on a commanding 
ridge to the west of the town. With Archer's Brigade 
on his right, and Davis's on his left, supported by 
Pegram's and Mcintosh's Battalions, Heth pushed 
forward, crossed Willoughby Run, and passed up the 
slope, where to their surprise they were met by two 
brigades of the First Corps (Cutler's brigade and Mere- 
dith's '^Iron Brigade") and were driven back with 



326 ROBERT E. LEE 

heavy loss. Rejuolds, moving to Gettysburg with 
Wadsworth's division, on hearing the firing, had ridden 
ahead, and, on finding that Hill was advancing, had 
sent word to Meade and hurried forward the First Corps 
to Buford's support. Conducting Wadsworth's division 
from the Emmetsburg Pike north-westward under cover 
of the woodland, he formed them on the ridge up which 
Heth was advancing. In a short time the remainder 
of the Federal First Corps, under Doubleday, had ar- 
rived on the ground, and when Archer, who had come 
under heavy fire from the crest above and obliqued 
to the right, penetrated the woodland in his advance, 
he found himself flanked and cut off by the Federal 
troops, and in retreating across the run was captured 
with a considerable portion of his brigade. Near the 
same wood Reynolds was killed about this time as he 
was placing his troops, and the command of the Federal 
force on the field devolved on Doubleday, until a little 
later, when Howard appeared a little in advance of the 
Eleventh Corps and took command. The fighting dur- 
ing these hours was hardly excelled during the war. 
Brigades were decimated; regiments on both sides 
were captured and recaptured. 

The fight, though not so celebrated, was as fierce 
and deadly as on any of the succeeding days. On the 
Federal side, the Eleventh Corps came up to the assist- 
ance of the First, and Howard, who as ranking officer 
assumed command of the field, sent urgent messages 
to Slocum and to Sickles to hasten to his support. 
Each side fought with the most desperate valor. There 
were times when the opposing ranks delivered their 



GETTYSBURG 327 

deadly volleys almost in each other's faces. Heth was 
nearly spent, when soon after two o'clock Rodes's 
Division, which on hearing the firing had been turned 
to the eastward and marched to the sound of the guns, 
came on the field deployed for action, and Hill, who 
appeared to be waiting for Ewell, now on his appear- 
ance sent Pender in. The fighting was renewed with 
redoubled fury; but in the nick of time Early came up 
on Rodes's left and gave a new impulse to the Confed- 
erate attack. Gordon, pushing forward against Bar- 
low on the Federal right centre, and favored by a wide 
gap between Barlow and Schurz, carried the hill to the 
north-east of the town and drove Barlow's men back 
on the town. Barlow himself was left for dead on the 
field, but happily recovered to add later to his repu- 
tation as a gallant and able officer. His men were 
driven with great loss from the crest which they had 
held so stoutly, and were pushed down into and through 
the town. 

The sweep of Pender's fresh troops added new fire to 
the Confederates, and rushing forward all along the 
front, they finally forced the Federal lines from their 
position, covering the town from north-east to south- 
west. The Eleventh Corps, driven down into the town, 
encountered there the rest of Early's Division, who 
had entered the town by the York Pike to the east- 
ward, and, becoming a confused mass, were captured 
to the number of several thousand. The remainder of 
them retreated through and beyond the town to the 
heights above it, known as Cemetery Ridge, and were 
followed by Early's Division until the latter were re- 



328 ROBERT E. LEE 

called by EwelFs command. The First Corps, which 
held on longer, was eventually forced back likewise, 
and was driven across the valley to the west of the 
town, still fighting as it retreated. 

Lee had arrived on the scene about two o'clock, hav- 
ing heard the sound of battle while he was riding 
toward Cashtown. A message from Hill informed him 
of the situation, and Lee, having ordered Anderson 
forward from Cashtown, rode on with his staff — rid- 
ing too hard for the corps commander with him. He 
arrived in time to see the enemy driven through the 
town. He appears to have been content with the way 
things had progressed, and about half-past two or 
three o'clock he sent Colonel Taylor, of his staff, to say 
to General Ewell that from where he was he could see 
''those people" retreating up the heights ''without or- 
ganization and in great confusion," that it was only 
necessary to press them to secure possession of the 
heights, and that, "if possible, he wished him to do 
this." Ewell, however, seems to have been personally 
spent, and to have thought that his men were equally 
so, and Lee's order had contained the proviso, "if pos- 
sible." They had, indeed, been marching and fighting 
together for twelve hours; but had he called on them 
for a final effort, it seems beyond question that they 
would have swept on and carried the heights. 

Hancock, \yho on the announcement of Reynolds's 
death had been sent forward by Meade to take over 
the command of the forces on the field, thought that 
the hill might have been captured by Ewell at that 
time had he pursued Howard's corps, but not after 



GETTYSBURG 329 

he himself arrived and made his dispositions for de- 
fence. He says: "When I arrived upon the field, about 
3 p. M., or between that and 3.30 p. m., I found the 
fighting about over; the rear of our troops were hur- 
rying through the town, pursued by the Confederates. 
There had been an attempt to reform some of the 
Eleventh Corps as they passed over Cemetery Hill, 
but it had not been very successful. I presume there 
may have been 1,000 or 1,200 organized troops of that 
corps in position on the hill." In addition to these, 
Steinwehr's brigade alone occupied the heights. 

Had Ewell not stopped the pursuit it is beyond 
question that Meade's army would have concentrated, 
as he had already ordered, along the Pipe Creek line. 

General Ewell ''deemed it unwise to make the pur- 
suit," for fear, probably, as Taylor conjectures, of bring- 
ing on a general engagement. However this was, the 
pursuit was not pressed, though Gordon, who was in the 
full tide of victory, required three or four orders ''of the 
most peremptory character" before he stayed his eager 
troops. Ewell not only halted his men and thus lost 
the golden opportunity presented of seizing the Ridge, 
whose possession two days later decided the issue of the 
battle and possibly that of the war, but he sent John- 
son's Division around Gulp's Hill, where it was isolated. 

It was a stubborn and bloody conflict, with from 
22,000 to 24,000 men on either side, and while it re- 
sulted in a clear victory for the Confederate troops, 
who not only swept the field but captured some 5,000 
prisoners, including two generals, the loss on both sides 
was heavy. On the Confederate side the losses were 



330 ROBERT E. LEE 

about 2,500, killed, wounded, and missing, and among 
them Heth and Scales had been wounded, and Archer 
had been captured. On the Union side the losses in 
killed and wounded were not less, and they had lost 
over 5,000 men captured, while Reynolds, the able 
commander of the First Corps, had been killed. 

That night the Federals fortified the heights, and 
as during the ensuing hours new troops came pouring 
in by forced marches, the lines were rapidly strength- 
ened with entrenchments. At the time, however, when 
Ewell halted, the commanding position of Gulp's Hill 
was unoccupied. Hancock states that he ordered Wads- 
worth's division and a battery to take position there 
in the afternoon. But two of E well's staff officers re- 
ported to him that they were on the hill at dark. That 
night Lee held a conference in Gettysburg, at wliicji 
were present Longstreet, Ewell, Hill, Rodes, Early, and 
Long, who has reported what occurred. "Longstreet 
gave it as his opinion that the best plan would be to 
turn Meade's left flank and force him back to the 
neighborhood of Pipecla}^ Greek. To this General Lee 
objected, and pronounced it impracticable under the 
circumstances." And later when Long, who had been 
directed to reconnoitre the Federal position on Ceme- 
tery Ridge, reported against a renewal of the attack 
that evening, he decided to make no further advance 
that evening, but to wait till morning to follow up his 
advantage. "He turned to Longstreet and Hill, who 
were present, and said : ' Gentlemen, we will attack the 
enemy in the morning as early as practicable.' In the 
conversation that succeeded, he directed them to make 



GETTYSBURG 331 

the necessary preparations and be ready for prompt 
action the next day." Such is Long's account of this 
conference/ 

On leaving the conference of the generals, General 
Lee informed General Pendleton, his chief of artillery, 
that he had ordered Longstreet to attack the enemy 
early next morning. This Longstreet has denied.^ 
But it is certain that Lee expected him to do this, and 
there is, in addition to Lee's declaration at the meet- 
ing, the testimony of many officers^ and the evidence 
of his own movements and demeanor the following 
morning. He was on the ground the following morn- 
ing at daybreak, and all who saw him testify to his 
eager expectation of Longstreet's appearance and his 
impatience at his delay.^ '^ Longstreet is so slow!" 
he exclaimed. At this hour only the Second Federal 
Corps, a division of the Twelfth and a division of the 
Third occupied the heights. Little Roundtop was not 
occupied, no guns were on the key to the field. 

Meade, at Taney town, Md., thirteen miles away, with 
the Second Corps, received Hancock's report of the sit- 
uation that first afternoon and, issuing orders with a 

* Long's "Memoir of Lee," p. 277. 

2 Philadelphia Times, Nov. 3, 1877. 

^See reports of Generals Anderson and Wilcox; also General Early's 
statement: Southern Historical Society Papers, December, 1877, pp. 
269, 285, 286. Lee's "Memoir of William N. Pendleton," p. 292. 

*"Next morning," writes one of his officers, speaking of the second 
day, in which his battalion rendered signal service, " about 9 a. m., while 
reconnoitring that region south-west of Big Roundtop, I ran across 
General Lee, with two or three couriers, riding through the wood. He 
called me to him and asked : ' Have you seen General Longstreet or any 
of his troops anywhere in this neighborhood? ' I answered that I had 
not. Then, getting a glimpse of a small body of men on foot moving 
along the edge of the woods, he despatched one of his couriers to learn 



332 ROBERT E. LEE 

promptness which bore rich fruit, marched for the 
heights commanding the battle-field, where he arrived 
at one in the morning. There was discussion as to the 
availability of the position, and Meade at one time 
thought of withdrawing from it; but Hancock rode 
in person to urge the stand on this field. The Fifth 
Corps, that evening, was at Union Mills, twenty-three 
miles away, and the Sixth Corps was at Manchester, 
thirty-four to thirty-six miles away. Lee's army la}' 
close to the battle-field, and might attack before hia 
troops got up, or might interpose between him and 
Washington.^ 

Longstreet says he himself opposed further fighting 
there. Lee, however, was ready for the fight, and, rely- 
ing on his officers and men, believed he could destroy 
Meade in detail. In the light of his failure some his- 
torians now criticise sharply his decision. Let us see. 
At daybreak Lee himself was ready and waiting for 
the battle to begin; but Longstreet, who the evening 
before had been averse to attacking, says he sought 
him out again at daybreak and renewed his views 
against making the attack on this side, an expostulation 



who they were. He then asked me how far I had been toward the 
mountain, pointing toward Roundtop, and my object in being out 
there, etc., and then as soon as the courier returned, he asked: 'Are 
they Longstreet's men? ' The answer was: 'They are not; but a small 
detachment returning to their command in the direction of Gettysburg.' 
Then, showing disappointment and impatience by his manner and tone, 
he said : ' I wonder where General Longstreet can be? . . . ' This inci- 
dent tends to confirm the belief, wellnigh universal among Confederates, 
that Longstreet was responsible for the loss of the battle." (Communi- 
cated to the writer by Colonel William T. Poague, from a manuscrijit 
prepared by him "for the information of his sons.") 
* Meade to Halleck. Despatch, 2 p. m., July 2, 1863. 



GETTYSBURG 333 

which caused Lee to send a staff officer to Ewell to 
ascertain whether, after examining the position by day- 
light, he could not attack. The position in front of 
Ewell was, however, now too strongly fortified to 
make an assault possible, and Meade, in contemplation 
of assuming the offensive, was massing his forces there. 
Lee even rode himself to confer with Ewell, but, find- 
ing what the situation was, adhered to his original 
decision and ordered Longstreet at eleven o'clock to 
attack as already directed.^ 

Even then, however, Longstreet held back, whether 
from obstinacy and refractoriness, or because "his 
heart was not in it" longer, or because he felt the situa- 
tion hopeless — the two former of which reasons have 
been charged against him, and the last of which has been 
claimed by him — has ever been a question hotly de- 
bated. However it was, though his troops, except one 
hi 'gade — Law's- -were encamped close to the battle- 
field, he failed to move until half the day had been lost, 
because, as he said, he hated to go into battle with 
one boot off; and when he moved, Roundtop was 
fully protected. Meade had changed his plan of at- 
tacking with his right, and had strengthened his left; 
Sedgwick's corps, the Sixth, had come up after an 
epoch-making march of thirty-four miles since nine 
o'clock the night before, and was in position, while 
Longstreet sulked and dawdled with his eager troops 
awaiting orders on the edge of the battle-field. 

Even as it was, in the furious battle which took 

' Henderson's Review of Longstreet 's " From Manassas to Appo- 
mattox." (Journal of Royal United Service Inst., October, 1897.) 



334 ROBERT E. LEE 

place that afternoon when Longstreet at last began to 
fight, Lee seized the elevation in front of his right, 
held it for some time, and passed beyond it, turned 
Sickles's left, and made a lodgement on Little Round- 
top, which Meade declared ''the key-point of his whole 
position," and held it with his brave Alabamians until 
driven back by the Fifth Corps, massed for the purpose, 
and this, if held, would, Meade states, "have prevented 
him from holding any of the ground he subsequently 
held to the last." 

Lee's plan is stated in his report. Longstreet was 
directed to make an attack upon the enemy's left. 
Ewell was to attack the high ground to his right, 
while Hill was to threaten the Federal centre to pre- 
vent the sending reinforcements to either wing.* 

All night of the 1st Hancock's corps was marching for 
Gettysburg, where it arrived next morning about seven 
o'clock, and was posted along Cemetery Ridge. Two 
brigades of Birney's arrived that evening, and two 
brigades of Humphreys's next morning. The Fifth 
Corps marched twenty-three miles, and reached the 
ground about eight o'clock a. m., when it was posted 
on the Federal right above Rock Creek. The Sixth 
Corps marched thirty-four miles, from Manchester, ar- 
riving only on the afternoon of the 2d. 

On the 2d, Longstreet 's Corps, except Law's Brigade, 
reached the immediate vicinity of the battle-field 
early in the morning. Kershaw bivouacked two miles 
from Gettysburg the night before, and was ordered to 
move at four o'clock in the morning. McLaws had 

' Lee's report. See Appendix C. 



GETTYSBURG 335 

reached the field at nine o'clock, and Lee, in Long- 
street's presence, personally pointed out to him on the 
map the road where he was to place his division. He 
reports that Lee rejected a suggestion of Longstreet's, 
and that the latter appeared irritated. From this 
time until after three o'clock, Lee was eagerly awaiting 
the movement by Longstreet which he had ordered, 
and which was to begin the battle. It was not, how- 
ever, until four o'clock that Hood moved forward to 
the attack against Sickles's left, which was bent back 
toward Roundtop. McLaws, opposite Sickles's centre, 
posted on high ground formed by an outbranching ele- 
vation nearly a mile in advance of the Federal left, was 
still held back "awaiting Longstreet's orders." In a 
brief time the fighting was as furious as any that oc- 
curred on that deadly field. Hood, pushing in beyond 
Sickles's left, sent his right to seize first Big and then 
Little Roundtop, which up to this hour had not been 
occupied by the Federals. But at this juncture — 
only a few minutes before Hood's men (Law's Ala- 
bamians) reached the top of that rocky spur — the 
Federals appeared in force on the summit, and again 
the chance of victory was snatched from Lee. Gen- 
eral Warren, who had been sent by Sickles a little 
while before to reconnoitre that part of the field, had 
ridden up Roundtop and caught sight of Hood's men 
moving forward on that position. Realizing the im- 
portance of the position, he had dashed back, and find- 
ing Vincent's brigade being pushed forward to Sickles's 
aid, he had turned and directed them up Little Round- 
top, which they reached just in time to hold against 



336 ROBERT E. LEE 

Law's Alabamians, who were clambering up the side. 
In the first shock the gallant Vincent was mortally 
wounded. Driven down the steep spur, Law's Brigade 
reformed at its foot, and, reinforced by Robertson's 
Texans and Bennings's Georgians, who had seized the 
Devil's Den and driven in Sickles's left, again charged 
up, driving Vincent's men back to the Top; but at 
this moment Federal reinforcements sent by Warren 
arrived, and Hood's men were once more driven down 
the steep, and Weed's brigade was sent with artillery 
to help hold what was now recognized as the key to the 
situation. '^ During all this time," says Alexander, 
''McLaws's Division was standing idle," though Barks- 
dale was begging to be allowed to charge, and McLaws 
was awaiting Longstreet's order. Even when it was 
advanced it was in detachments, which sacrificed bri- 
gade after brigade. Kershaw, Semmes, Wofford, and 
Barksdale, Wilcox, Lang, and Wright fought brilliantly, 
but in turn rather than in concert, attacking Sickles 
along his left and centre. At length. Hood, on the ex- 
treme right, McLaws next to him, and Anderson, on 
the left, after furious fighting drove Sickles from the 
peach-orchard, across the wheat-field, and drove them 
finally, with terrific losses to both sides, to the high 
ground along Cemetery Ridge, christening the ground 
which Pickett was to make glorious next day.^ The 
Fifth Corps, however, was now in position, and the 
Sixth Corps was arriving, and being put in to the north 
of Roundtop, was sent forward to support the hard- 
pressed Third Corps, which was being cfriven across 

' Alexander's "Memoirs," pp. 394-403. 



GETTYSBURG 337 

the wheat-field. Further to the Confederate left, while 
Anderson was supporting McLaws with Wilcox alone, 
while Mahone and Posey were held back. Hill attacked 
the Federal centre with but two brigades — Wright's 
Georgia Brigade and Perry's Florida Brigade under 
Lang. In a splendid charge across the open valley 
and up the bare slope under a withering fire of bullet, 
shot, and shell they advanced for over three-quarters 
of a mile, drove the enemy from their first line and car- 
ried the Ridge, capturing a number of the guns with 
which it was crowned. But here they found the enemy 
in a second line beyond their guns, and with their flanks 
exposed to a destructive fire of canister from either side, 
they were forced back with terrible losses, thus losing 
for want of support what Pickett vainly tried to capture 
next day. Wright declared that he could have held 
the Ridge had he been supported. None of these new 
troops on the Federal side were on the ground before 
five o'clock, and it cost 10,000 men to gain but a small 
part of what might have been seized with comparatively 
little cost had Lee's orders been carried out in the fore- 
noon, when only the Second Corps and one division of 
the Third Corps were on the Ridge south of Cemetery 
Hill. 

Ewell had waited all morning for the signal of Long- 
street's and Hill's guns to begin his assault on the 
Federal right, on Cemetery Hill, and on the eastern 
spur of Gulp's Hill, both of which were well fortified 
and defended with abundant artillery to protect them. 
Owing probably to the deadly fire from the batteries 
crowning the hills, E well's attack was delayed until 



338 ROBERT E. LEE 

nearly sunset. Early was to attack Cemetery Hill 
with Hoke's and Hays's Brigades, and Edward John- 
son, to his left, was to assault Gulp's Hill. Under a 
withering fire Hays's Brigade carried Cemetery Ridge, 
but was forced back again by Hancock's reinforcement 
of the Eleventh Corps and the failure of his own sup- 
porting columns to come up on his right till he was 
driven back. It was not until after Early had been 
driven back with terrific losses that Johnson's Division, 
to the left, moved on the enemy's right on Culp's Hill. 
Johnson, after heavy fighting, carried the enemy's 
breastworks, which he held until next morning, when 
he was driven from them by the Twelfth Corps, rein- 
forced by portions of the Fifth and Sixth Corps. The 
whole battle was without concert. 

Yet Lee, at the close of the day, had made decided 
gains. He had driven Sickles from his chosen position 
to the ridge behind it; had effected a lodgement in the 
Devil's Den near the foot of the Roundtops, and on the 
enemy's right held their fortifications on Culp's Hill 
He had suffered terribly himself, but had inflicted on 
them losses of 10,000 men, and he had received the re- 
inforcement of Pickett's Division and of Stuart's Cav- 
alry. Lee's own view was that ''the result of the day's 
operation induced the belief that, with proper concert 
of action and with the increased support that the 
position gained on the right would enable the artillery 
to render the assaulting column," he had good grounds 
to count on success.^ Accordingly, that night at a 

■Lee's report. Cf. Fitzhugh Lee's "Life of Lee"; General Hum- 
phreys' "Gettysburg Campaign." 



GETTYSBURG 339 

council of war he determined to continue the attack, 
and gave orders for the assault next morning. 

Stuart having, as stated, crossed the Potomac to 
the eastward of Hooker, did not learn of the changed 
status of affairs, and of Lee's concentration of his army 
about Gettysburg, until he reached Carlisle, well to the 
north of Gettysburg, which he had passed around on his 
way toward the Susquehanna. He then turned and 
made for Gettysburg, where he arrived on the after- 
noon of the second day. It was said by men who were 
present when Stuart met Lee, that the latter exclaimed 
with more feeling than he usually allowed himself to 
manifest: '^ General Stuart, where have you been?" 
and when Stuart explained, and mentioned his capture 
of over two hundred wagons, that Lee exclaimed: "Two 
hundred wagons ! General Stuart, what are two hun- 
dred wagons to this army!" Then, inmaediately re- 
covering himself, the commanding-general proceeded 
to give his lieutenant orders as to the disposition of his 
force. This disposition sent him around the left to 
strike the enemy's rear, where he was engaged heavily 
with Gregg and Custer, without material results. On 
the 3d, to quote Lee's report, 'Hhe general plan was un- 
changed. Longstreet, reinforced by Pickett's three bri- 
gades, which arrived near the battle-field during the 
afternoon of the 2d, was ordered to attack the next 
morning, and General Ewell was directed to assault 
the enemy's right at the same time." ^ 

But on the 3d, as before, the movement against the 
centre was delayed for hours, and when finally it was 

' Lee's report. 



340 ROBERT E. LEE 

carried out, there was again a failure of the support 
which alone could bring success. Johnson, isolated on 
the extreme left, was attacked at daylight and driven 
from the position he had captured the evening before, 
and after he had charged again and been repulsed with 
great loss, this ended the fighting for the day on that 
part of the field. 

To the right the morning wore away and noon came 
and passed without the expected assault. Every hour 
was spent by Meade in strengthening his lines and pre- 
paring for the coming storm. 

It was nearly two o'clock when the guns of the 
Confederate artillery, about 125 in number, along the 
Seminary Ridge, which were to begin the fight and 
prepare the way for the infantry to charge the Fed- 
eral lines, entrenched on the Cemetery Ridge, nearly a 
mile away, opened fire on them. They were promptly 
replied to by the guns, about 100 in all, but of supe- 
rior calibre and force, ranged along the Federal lines. 

It is said that no such cannonading as this had ever 
been known on the continent. The Federal batteries 
presently slackened, as proved later, merely to sub- 
stitute fresh battalions, and Alexander, in charge of 
Lee's advance artillery, sent an urgent message to 
Longstreet that his ammunition was nearly exhausted, 
and on Longstreet's saying that he had better replenish 
it, replied that there was none with which to replenish. 
Then finally Longstreet ordered his leading division 
forward, and in all the annals of war there is no more 
heroic record than that of that stead}^ march across 
the open plain, with the Federal army posted on the 



GETTYSBURG 341 

ridge above it raining death upon them from 100 guns 
and 50,000 muskets. 

Lee says nothing of the hour set for the attack ; but 
according to overwhelming authority it was to be made 
in the early morning by a column composed of McLaws's 
and Hood's Divisions, reinforced by Pickett's Brigades/ 
Ewell says "at daylight Friday morning, and that John- 
son was engaged when he was informed that Longstreet 
would not be ready till ten."^ But when Longstreet, 
hours later, unwillingly gave his order to Pickett to ad- 
vance in the charge which has made Pickett's Division 
glorious, curiously enough McLaws and Hood were not 
sent forward in support, and these two fine divisions 
were left where they were awaiting orders, and the 
first knowledge they had was that the assault had been 
made and had failed.^ 

Heth's Division under Pettigrew — who commanded 
since Heth's disablement by a serious wound the day 
before — was formed in two lines on Pickett's left, with 
a space of several hundred yards between the two, and 
two brigades of Pender's Division, under Trimble, were 
formed in the rear and in supporting distance of Petti- 
grew. Wilcox's Brigade, from Anderson's Division, was 
ordered to move on Pickett's right flank as a protec- 
tion to that flank. In all, about 14,000 or 15,000 men 
against 70,000, posted in one of the strongest positions 
found during the war. It was a tragic situation. 

With ranks dressed on their colors and bands play- 
ing as if on parade, the gray line marched down the 

' Lee's report. ^ Ewell's report. 

^ Longstreet's account of the battle. 



342 ROBERT E. LEE 

slope, across the level, and then up the long slope be- 
fore them, and all the while the gaps were being torn 
wider and wider in their ranks by the sleet of iron from 
a hundred guns, trained on them from front and flanks. 

It transpired later that a part of the Confederate 
artillery had not done great damage, having failed 
to get the range. One battery of Nelson's Battalion, 
however (Milledge's), posted on a ridge to the north- 
east of Cemetery Hill, struck the range and did much 
execution with its rifled guns, enfilading the Eleventh 
Corps, till Nelson was ordered to withdraw.^ No bet- 
ter description of what followed can be written than 
that contained in Colonel David Gregg Mcintosh's 
"Review of the Gettysburg Campaign." The author 
was himself not only a "beholder," but one of the most 
gallant participants in that fatal battle. 

"When Pickett and the other divisions emerged from 
cover and advanced to the open, they presented a 
thrilling spectacle, and one which no beholder can ever 
forget. The ranks were beautifully dressed, and the 
battle-flags told off the different commands. . . . 

"As the lines advanced, and the batteries of the 
enemy again opened, and the gaps in the ranks began 
to grow wider and then to shrivel and shrink up be- 
neath the deadly, withering fire of the infantry, and the 
stream of the wounded began to pour back in increas- 
ing volume, the hearts of those who were spectators 
were filled at first with a deep hush of expectancy, and 
then with a feeling of agonized despair, when the goal 
seemed to be reached and, hanging suspended a mo- 

' Alexander's "Memoirs," pp. 418, 427. 



GETTYSBURG 343 

merit, the tide rolled backward broken into fragments, 
and the brave fellows who a half hour before marched 
so valiantly up to the cannon's mouth, now lay pros- 
trate on the green slopes, or else came limping back, 
battered and bleeding. There is no need for repetition 
of the details. The monuments on the ground attest 
the desperate valor with which each side fought." 

As the broken ranks came back across the shot- 
ploughed plain, Lee advanced to meet them. "This is 
too bad! too bad!" he exclaimed. "It is all my fault." 
And then to the men as they passed him he said: " Go 
down to the stream and refresh yourselves." The next 
moment he was ordering up troops to meet any coun- 
terstroke which Meade might attempt. But Meade, 
like himself, was spent. Valor may be infinite, but en- 
durance has its limitations. 

The battle of Gettysburg has continued to be fought 
over from that day to the present, and will doubtless 
continue to be fought over for many years to come. 
To one, however, who has endeavored to study care- 
fully and dispassionately both sides of the controversy 
which has grown out of this battle, it appears that Lee 
had good reason to believe that he would win it; that 
he ought to have won it on the first day, and on the 
second, even against Meade's masterly generalship; but 
that on the third day his chances were incalculably 
diminished. Whatever may be thought as to this, the 
opinion of the future is likely to be that on the part 
of Lee's corps commanders it was the worst-fought 
battle of the war. With a plan that gave every promise 
of success, and that ought to have succeeded — with 



344 ROBERT E. LEE 

valor never surpassed on any field^ valor on both sides 
so heroic and so splendid as to be almost incredible — 
the corps commanders, not once, but again and again, 
by their failure to carry out the plan of their chief in 
the spirit in which it was conceived, threw away every 
chance of victory and left the honors of all but valor 
to the Union general. 

It used to be conamon soon after the war for old Con- 
federate officers to declare that Longstreet should have 
been shot immediately after the battle, and that Napo- 
leon would certainly have done so. But Lee was cast in 
a different mould. Of all his army he possibly knew 
most fully how absolutely Longstreet had frustrated 
his plans, and certainly of all he treated him with most 
leniency. No hint of his subordinate's failure or de- 
lay appears in his report, and to the day of his death 
he wrote his old lieutenant letters full of warm re- 
gard. But while he was assuming the burden of the 
responsibility and wrote Longstreet the affectionate 
letters of an old brother-in-arms who knew his worth, 
and overlooked his errors, Longstreet, with what was 
not far from sheer ingratitude, was placing on Lee the 
blame for his own shortcomings, and was arrogantly 
claiming that had he been allowed to dictate the plan 
of the campaign, the result would have been success. 

Longstreet's fatal delay has been attributed to the 
time it required to find and follow a route to Sickles's 
left flank without being observed. General E. P. Alex- 
ander, his chief of artillery, admits his unaccountable 
slowness. But a better reason may be found in his 
own account of his action. After General Lee was in 



GETTYSBURG 345 

his honored grave, Longstreet published his own de- 
fence, in which, evidently angered by Lee's reported 
speech that Longstreet was "so slow/', he undertook to 
prove that Lee had made eleven grave errors in the pre- 
cipitation and conduct of the battle of Gettysburg. He 
says that he opposed fighting the battle of Gettysburg, 
and that when he, on the evening of the 1st, gave his 
opinion to General Lee that they could not have called 
the enemy to a position better suited to their plans, 
and that all they had to do was to file around his left 
and secure good ground between him and his capital, 
he was astonished at Lee's impatience and his vehement 
declaration: "If he is there to-morrow I will attack 
him," and thereupon he observes: "His desperate 
mood was painfully evident and gave rise to serious 
apprehensions." All of which was written long after- 
ward and as a defence against the quite general and 
serious criticism of his own conduct as the cause of 
Lee's failure. 

But why, it has been asked, should Lee have been 
in a desperate mood? He had an army on which he 
knew he could count to do anything if they were 
properly led. He had gone into the North to fight; 
he had just seen a part of his force roll two fine army 
corps, fighting furiously, back through the town and 
over the heights, in confusion, leaving in his hands 
5,000 captives, and he knew that the bulk of the 
Federal army was from four to nine times as far from 
the field as his own corps. His reason for fighting 
next morning was, therefore, not his desperation, but 
his apparently well-grounded hope that he should win 



346 ROBERT E. LEE 

a battle before Meade could concentrate^ and then be 
in a position to force terms. His position has com- 
mended itself to clear-headed soldiers since/ and the 
criticism of it is retroactive and based on events which 
should not, and in all human probability would not, 
have occurred but for Longstreet's slowness if not 
his bull-headedness. 

Lee, as he waited on the morning of the 2d for Long- 
street to move forward, gave Hood, who had been on 
the ground since daybreak, his chief reason for fighting. 
''The enemy is here," he said, ^'and if we don't whip 
him he will whip us." It was a sound reason and has 
been approved by good critics, and had Longstreet not 
dallied or sulked for more than half the day it might 
have been justified before dark fell on the night of the 
2d of July. With Meade's army concentrated in his 
front, Lee could not l^etire through the passes of the 
South Mountain, and he could not manoeuvre without 
abandoning his lines of communication; for without 
his cavalry he could get no supplies. As we see Long- 
street fooling away the hours while spade and shovel 
rang along the green crest piling up the earthworks, 
and while Sedgwick's Sixth Corps, hot-footed, pushed 
along the dusty roads telling off the long miles hour 
after hour, we may well understand how different would 
have been the result had but Stonewall Jackson com- 
manded that day the bronzed and eager divisions lying 
all morning with stacked arms awaiting orders. Doubt- 

' Lieutenant-Colonel G. F. R. Henderson's Review of Longstreet's 
"From Manassas to Appomattox." {Journal of Royal United Service 
Inst., October, 1897.) 



GETTYSBURG 347 

less it was this that was in Lee's mind when, long 
afterward, he said: ''If I had had Jackson at Gettys- 
burg, as far as human reason can see, I should have 
won a great victory." 

On July 3, when I^ee assaulted he was repulsed in 
what is known to soldiers as the third day's battle; but 
his defeat was accomplished in the first half of the 
preceding day, when Longstreet failed to carry out his 
orders and the golden opportunity was lost. 

To show that on this third day it was Longstreet 's 
slowness which destroyed finally all possibility of suc- 
cess, cannot be better done than by quoting from the 
illuminating review of his book by Lieutenant-Colonel, 
afterward Brigadier-General, G. F. R. Henderson, al- 
ready so closely followed. 

"His conduct on the third day," declares this critic, 
"opens up a still graver issue. The First Army Corps 
when at length, on the afternoon of July 2, it was per- 
mitted to attack had achieved a distinct success. The 
enemy was driven back to his main position with 
enormous loss. On the morning of July 3, Lee deter- 
mined to assault that position, in front and flank, 
simultaneously, and, according to his chief of the staff, 
Longstreet 's Corps was to make the main attack on 
the centre, while the Second Corps attacked the right. 
But again there was delay, and this time it was fatal. 
. . . We may note that according to Longstreet 's own 
testimony the order [to attack] was given soon after 
sunrise, and yet, although the Second Corps attacking 
the Federal right became engaged at daylight, it was 
not until 1 p. m., eight hours later, that the artillery of 



348 ROBERT E. LEE 

the First Corps opened fire, and not till 2 p. m. that the 
infantry advanced. Their assault was absolutely iso- 
lated. The Second Corps had already been beaten 
back. The Third Corps, although a division who were 
ready to move to any point to which Longstreet might 
indicate, was not called upon for assistance. Two divis- 
ions of his own corps, posted on the right flank, did 
absolutely nothing, and after a supremely gallant ef- 
fort the 15,000 men who were hurled against the front 
of the Federal army, and some of whom actually 
penetrated the position, were repulsed with fearful 
slaughter." 

After discussing in detail Longstreet's tactics and 
action, this thoughtful critic adds: ''But the crucial 
question is this : Why did he delay his attack for eight 
hours, during which time the Second Corps with which 
he was to co-operate was heavily engaged? If he 
moved only under compulsion, if he deliberately for- 
bore to use his best efforts to carry out Lee's design, 
and to compel him to adopt his own, the case is very 
different. That he did so seems perfectly clear." "If 
Lee was to blame at all in the Gettysburg campaign," 
adds Henderson, ''it was in taking as his second in 
command a general who was so completely indifferent 
to the claim of discipline." 

Had Lee's orders been obeyed, he would probably 
have won the battle of Gettysburg. He must have 
won it on the 2d of July, when he had "a fine oppor- 
tunity of dealing with the enemy in detail"; he might 
have won it even on the 3d, though his chances of doing 
so were greatly diminished. But fate, that decides the 



GETTYSBURG 349 

issues of nations, decreed otherwise. The crown of 
Cemetery Ridge, seized and held for twenty minutes 
by that devoted band of gray-clad heroes, marks the 
highest tide, not of Confederate valor, but of Confed- 
erate hope. Even so, it appeared at first but a drawn 
battle. The Army of Northern Virginia had struck 
Meade so terrible a blow that, as Halleck testified be- 
fore the commission on the conduct of the war, a coun- 
cil of war was held on the night of the 4th to decide 
whether they should retreat. At this council Meade 
asked his corps commanders three momentous ques- 
tions: First, "Shall the army remain here?" Second, 
"If we remain here, shall we assume the offensive?" 
And then, third, "By what route shall we follow Lee?" 
The majority of voices were for remaining there; but 
unanimously they were against assuming the offensive. 
All that day the two armies lay on the opposite hills 
like spent lions nursing their wounds, neither of them 
able to attack the other. Next day Lee, with ammu- 
nition-chests nearly exhausted, fell slowly back to the 
Potomac, cautiously followed by his antagonist, and 
after waiting quietly for its swollen waters to subside, 
recrossed into Virginia. It was a defeat, for Lee had 
failed of his purpose. But it was a defeat which barely 
touches his fame as a captain. No other captain or 
army in history might have done more. No other ever 
conducted a more masterly retreat when the fight 
ended in failure. 

It was possibly apparent to most trained soldiers 
when the remnants of the gray line that had climbed 
the long slopes of Gettysburg under the deadly sleet 



350 ROBERT E. LEE 

that poured down on them, came back, that the battle 
was lost, and the Southern cause had received a stagger- 
ing shock. None could have known it so well as Lee, 
and later he wrote his wife that she must not place too 
much reliance on the newspaper accounts of the South- 
ern success. But he gave no sign of defeat. When 
young Colonel Pendleton, who had been Jackson's adju- 
tant-general, and was still adjutant-general of the Second 
Corps, took him, on the 4th, the casualty list of his corps, 
and thinking to be encouraging, remarked that he hoped 
that the other two corps were in as good condition for 
work as the Second was that morning, Lee looked at 
him steadily and said coldly: ''Wliat reason have you, 
young gentleman, to suppose that they are not?" 

During the 4th he had begun to send back his trains, 
his wounded and his prisoners, under a cavalry escort, 
taking the direct road for Williamsport by Fairfield, 
and on the night of the 4th he began to withdraw his 
army. Owing, however, to the storm and the condition 
of the roads, it was not till the afternoon of the 5th 
that Ewell's command, composing his rear guard, left 
his position in front of Meade. Next day Meade, urged 
on from Washington, began his pursuit, if that could be 
termed a pursuit, which took a roundabout course by 
Frederick and Middletown, and did not bring him to 
the Potomac until Lee had been waiting there for six 
days. Within sixty hours, Lee was at Hagerstown, 
posted to receive any assault which Meade might de- 
liver. Then, as the assault was not made, he moved 
on. On the 13th he was at Williamsport, where, find- 
ing the river in flood, he took a position, which he forti- 



GETTYSBURG 351 

fied in such a manner as to cover his position all the 
way to Falling Waters, and again prepared for battle, 
and awaited Meade's attack. Then, to quote his own 
words, as the river was likely to rise higher, and Meade 
''exhibited an intention of fortifying so as to hold a 
small force in our front, while they operated elsewhere," 
Lee concluded to recross to the Virginia side. This he 
accomplished on the afternoon and night of Monday, 
the 13th, and the morning of Tuesday, the 14th.^ 

As Lee lay near Williamsport, waiting for the Po- 
tomac River to subside, he gave an exhibition of his 
constancy. He heard here of the capture by Kil- 
patrick, in a raid, of his son. General W. H. F. Lee, 
who had been seriously wounded, and was ill at the 
home of his wife's uncle, Mr. William F. Wickham, in 
Hanover County. ''I have heard with great grief," 
he writes his wife, "that Fitzhugh has been captuted 
by the enemy. Had not expected that he would have 
been taken from his bed and carried off, but we must 
bear this additional affliction with fortitude and res- 
ignation and not repine at the will of God. It will 
eventuate in some good that we know not of now. 
We must all bear our labors and hardships manfully. 
Our noble men are cheerful and confident. I con- 
stantly remember you in my thoughts and prayers." 

To Mr. Davis he writes, on the 8th, of his army: 
''Though reduced in numbers by the hardships and 
battles through which it has passed since leaving the 
Rappahannock, its condition is good, and its confidence 

' " Memoirs of William Nelson Pendleton, D.D., " pp. 295, 296. E. P. 
Alexander's "Memoirs," p. 441. 



352 ROBERT E. LEE 

is unimpaired. I hope your Excellency will under- 
stand that I am not in the least discouraged, or that my 
faith in the protection of an all-merciful Providence, or 
in the fortitude of this army, is at all shaken." 

When was that constant soul ever shaken! God 
had established it beyond the power of adversity to 
touch, much less to shake, it. On July 12, lying be- 
tween Meade's great army and the swollen river, he 
writes his wife: ''You will learn before this reaches 
you, that our success at Gettysburg was not so great 
as reported. In fact, that we failed to drive the enemy 
from his position, and that our army withdrew to the 
Potomac. Had the river not unexpectedly risen, all 
would have been well with us; but God in His all-wise 
providence willed otherwise, and our communications 
have been interrupted and almost cut off. The waters 
have subsided to about four feet, and if they continue, 
by to-morrow I hope our communications will be open. 
I trust that a merciful God, our only hope and refuge, 
will not desert us in this hour of need, and will deliver 
us by His almighty hand, that the whole world may 
recognize His power, and all hearts be lifted up in 
adoration and praise of His unbounded loving-kindness. 
We must, however, submit to His almighty will, what- 
ever that may be. May God guide and protect us all 
is my constant prayer." 

Surely no defeated general, with his army lying 
where, humanly speaking, every chance was against 
them, ever exhibited a humbler heart to God or pre- 
sented a more constant front to his enemy. Meade, 
though heavily reinforced, could not see his way clear 



GETTYSBURG 353 

to assault a foe so bold and perilous even in retreat, 
and called a council of war, at which the decision 
reached was not to attack. And, indeed, Lee's position 
was almost impregnable/ The insistence of the gov- 
ernment in Washington, however, was so great, and 
Halleck's despatch to Meade was so close akin to a 
censure, that he instantly requested to be relieved, 
which drew from Halleck something like an apology. 
The next day, spurred on by the reflection of his supe- 
riors in Washington, he made his dispositions to attack; 
but the day before Lee had begun to cross the river, 
and by one o'clock on the 14th his rear guard, com- 
posed of Hill's command, was over, leaving to the 
enemy, as the spoils of the rear-guard battle fought by 
Hill's Division, 2 guns, a number of wagons abandoned 
for want of horses, and some 500 men, including strag- 
glers from various commands, '^overcome by previous 
labors and hardships, and fatigues of a most trying 
night." Such was Lee's account. 

Before leaving the subject of Gettysburg, it may 
prove illuminating, even at the cost of some repetition, 
to know what Lee himself said on the subject of this 
campaign. His formal statement is contained in his re- 
port to his government, nearly a month later. ^ He gives 
in outline not only his movements, but his reasons, and 
in them we have the picture of the man. No word of 
censure appears. It is a simple and lucid statement of 
the essential facts, and testifies to a serene and con- 
stant mind. The responsibility he assumed fully and 

'Humphreys' "Gettysburg Campaign." 
^ See Appendix C. 



354 ROBERT E. LEE 

unequivocally. His reference to Longstrect conveys a 
commendation, in that he linked his name with the 
capture of " the desired ground " on the second day/ 

On his return to Virginia, Lee wrote to his wife let- 
ters which gave his views on the situation : 

Bunker Hill, Va., July 15th. 
The army has returned to Virginia. Its return is 
rather sooner than I had originally contemplated, but 
having accomplished much of what I proposed on leav- 
ing the Rappahannock — namely, relieving the valley 
of the presence of the enemy and drawing his army 
north of the Potomac — I determined to recross the 
latter river. The enemy, after concentrating his forces 
in our front, began to fortify himself in his position, 
and bring up his troops, militia, etc., and those around 
Washington and Alexandria. This gave him enormous 
odds. It also circumscribed our limits for procuring 
subsistence for men and animals, which, with the un- 
certain state of the river, rendered it hazardous for us 
to continue on the north side. It has been raining a 
great deal since we first crossed the Potomac, making 
the roads horrid and embarrassing our operations. 
The night we recrossed it rained terribly; yet we got 
all over safe, save such vehicles as broke down on the 
road from the mud, rocks, etc. We are all well. I 
hope we will yet be able to damage our adversaries 
when they meet us, and that all will go right with us. 
That it should be so we must implore the forgiveness 
of God for our sins and the continuance of His bless- 
ings. There is nothing but His almighty power that 
can sustain us. God bless you all. 

' See Appendix C. 



GETTYSBURG 355 

Camp Culpeper, Va., July 26, 1863. 
After crossing the Potomac, finding that the Shen- 
andoah was six feet above fording stage, and having 
waited a week for it to fall so that I might cross into 
Loudoun, fearing that the enemy might take advantage 
of our position and move upon Richmond, I deter- 
mined to ascend the valley and cross into Culpeper. 
Two corps are here with me. The third passed Thorn- 
ton's Gap, and, I hope, will be in striking distance 
to-morrow. The army has labored hard, endured much, 
and behaved nobly. It has accomplished all that could 
be reasonably expected. It ought not to have been ex- 
pected to perform impossibilities or to have fulfilled the 
anticipations of the thoughtless and unreasonable. 

The numbers of the respective armies on the field 
were: Meade's troops, 105,000; Lee's troops, 62,000. 
The losses during the three days were: Meade's losses, 
23,000 — killed, wounded, and missing; Lee's losses, 
20,500 — killed, wounded, and missing. In the Army of 
the Potomac 4 general officers were killed and 13 were 
wounded. In the Army of Northern Virginia 5 general 
officers were killed and 9 were wounded. It is a roll 
of honor. 

Three or four cardinal mistakes united to cause Lee's 
defeat at Gettysburg. The first was Stuart's failure 
to keep him apprised of Hooker's movements, by which 
he ran into the Federal army in a situation where he 
had either to fight and whip it or be whipped by it. 
The second was Ewell's failure to pursue the advantage 
he had gained on the afternoon of the 1st and seize 
Cemetery Ridge, instead of halting his troops below it 
and giving Meade time to occupy and fortify it. The 



356 ROBERT E. LEE 

third was Longstreet's failure to attack^ on the morn- 
ing of the 2d, before Meade's whole army was up. And 
the fourth was Longstreet's failure to carry out his 
orders and attack in concert on the morning of the 3d, 
instead of throwing away the entire forenoon and then 
sending Pickett and Heth alone up the long open slopes 
of Gettysburg, with the whole Federal army to play on 
them as they advanced. 

Had Stuart operated between Lee and Hooker's 
army, as he was expected to do, Lee might have chosen 
his own battle-ground and have awaited attack as he 
did at Sharpsburg, The absence of Stuart on his raid 
Steele thinks possibly cost Lee a victory. But even 
after Gettysburg had become the battle-ground, Lee's 
plan was sound enough had his corps commanders not 
hesitated and delayed the execution of their respective 
parts. Valor could do no more than was done. On 
both sides it reached its high tide of self-devotion and 
immolation. But the intelligence which should have 
directed this valor on the Southern side suddenly fell 
into abeyance, and the opportunities which Fortune 
offered were allowed to pass unheeded with the passing 
hours. Indeed, the judgment of the future is likely to 
be, that while on the Northern side the corps command- 
ers made amends for lack of plan and saved the day by 
their admirable co-operation, on the Southern side the 
plan of the commanding general was defeated by the 
failure of the corps commanders to act promptly and in 
concert. Lee's declaration that had he had Jackson at 
Gettysburg, he would, so far as man could see, have 
won the battle, is to this effect. The prompt' and high- 



GETTYSBURG 357 

minded Meade was a little later superseded by his 
government in favor of the victorious Grant, and loy- 
ally served under him as commander of the Army of 
the Potomac to the end. His government thought he 
should have destroyed Lee's army. The truth is that 
Lee's army was indestructible by any force that Meade 
could have brought against it. But, at the South, 
neither Lee nor his heroic army ever stood higher 
with the authorities or the Southern people. His 
very defeat seems even now but the pedestal for a 
more exalted heroism. With a magnanimity too sub- 
lime for conamon men wholly to appreciate, he took 
all the blame for the failure on himself. History has 
traversed his unselfish statement, and has placed the 
blame where it justly belongs: on those who failed to 
carry out the plan his daring genius had conceived. 

Moved possibly by the criticism of the opposition 
press, for there was ever a hostile and intractable press 
attacking the government of the Confederacy and re- 
viling all its works, Lee a little later wrote to Mr. Davis 
and proposed that he should be relieved by some 
younger and possibly more efficient man. His bodily 
strength was failing, he said, and he was dependent 
on the eyes of others. Mr. Davis promptly reassured 
him in a letter which goes far to explain the personal 
loyalty to him, not only of Lee, but of the South. 

These letters give a picture of the two men in their 
relation to each other, and to the cause they repre- 
sented, and should be read in full by all who would 
understand the character of the two leaders of the 
Confederacy. 



358 ROBERT E. LEE 

Lee's letter was as follows: 

Camp Orange, August 8, 1863. 
Mr. President: 

Your letters of the 28th of July and 2d of August 
have been received, and I have waited for a leisure 
hour to reply, but I fear that will never come. I am 
extremely obliged to you for the attention given to the 
wants of this army and the efforts made to supply 
them. Our absentees are returning, and I hope the 
earnest and beautiful appeal made to the country in 
your proclamation may stir up the whole people, and 
that they may see their duty and perform it. Nothing 
is wanted but that their fortitude should equal their 
bravery to insure the success of our cause. We must 
expect reverses, even defeats. They are sent to teach 
us wisdom and prudence, to call forth greater energies, 
and to prevent our falling into greater disasters. Our 
people have only to be true and united, to bear man- 
fully the misfortunes incident to war, and all will come 
right in the end. I know how prone we are to censure, 
and how ready to blame others for the non-fulfilment 
of our expectations. This is unbecoming in a generous 
people, and I grieve at its expression. The general 
remedy for the want of success in a military commander 
is his removal. This is natural, and in many instances 
proper; for no matter what may be the ability of the 
officer, if he loses the confidence of his troops, disaster 
must sooner or later ensue. 

I have been prompted by these reflections more than 
once since my return from Pennsylvania to propose to 
your Excellency the propriety of selecting another 
commander for this army. I have seen and heard of ex- 
pressions of discontent in the public journals as the 
result of the expedition. I do not know how far this 
feeling extends to the army. My brother officers have 



GETTYSBURG 359 

been too kind to report it, and so far the troops have 
been too generous to exhibit it. It is fair, however, 
to suppose that it does exist, and success is so necessary 
to us that nothing should be left undone to secure it. 
I, therefore, in all sincerity, request your Excellency 
to take measures to supply my place. I do this with 
the more earnestness because no one is more aware 
than myself of my inability to discharge the duties of 
my position. I cannot even accomplish what I myself 
desire. How can I fulfil the expectations of others? 
In addition, I sensibly feel the growing failure of my 
bodily strength. I have not yet recovered from the 
attack I experienced the past spring. I am becoming 
more and more incapable of exertion, and am thus pre- 
vented from making the personal examination and giv- 
ing the supervision to the operations in the field which 
I feel to be necessary. I am so dull that, in undertak- 
ing to use the eyes of others, I am frequently misled. 

Everything, therefore, points to the advantage to be 
derived from a new commander, and I the more anx- 
iously urge the matter upon your Excellency from my 
belief that a younger and abler man than myself can 
be readily obtained. I know that he will have as 
gallant and brave an army as ever existed to second his 
efforts, and it would be the happiest day of my life to 
see at its head a worthy leader — one that would accom- 
plish more than I can perform, and all that I have 
wished. I hope your Excellency will attribute my 
request to the true reason — the desire to serve my 
country and to do all in my power to insure the success 
of her righteous cause. 

I have no complaints to make of any one but my- 
self. I have received nothing but kindness from those 
above me, and the most considerate attention from 
my comrades and companions in arms. To your Ex- 
cellency I am specially indebted for uniform kindness 



360 ROBERT E. LEE 

and consideration. You have done everything in your 
power to aid me in the work committed to my charge, 
without omitting anything to promote the general 
welfare. I pray that your efforts may at length be 
crowned with success, and that you may long live to 
enjoy the thanks of a grateful people. 
With sentiments of great esteem, I am. 

Very respectfully and truly yours, 
R. E, Lee, General. 
His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, President Confederate 
States. 

To this letter President Davis sent the following 
reply: 

Richmond, Va., August 11, 1863. 
General R. E. Lee, 

Commanding Army of Northern Virginia. 

Yours of the 8th inst. has just been received. I am 
glad that you concur so entirely with me as to the 
wants of our country in this trying hour, and am happy 
to add that after the first depression consequent upon 
our disasters in the West, indications have appeared 
that our people will exhibit that fortitude which we 
agree in believing is alone needed to secure ultimate 
success. 

It well became Sidney Johnston when overwhelmed 
by a senseless clamor to admit the rule that success is 
the test of merit; and yet there has been nothing which 
I have found to require a greater effort of patience than 
to bear the criticisms of the ignorant who pronounce 
everything a failure which does not equal their expec- 
tations or desires, and can see no good result which is 
not in the line of their own imaginings. 

I admit the propriety of your conclusions that an 



GETTYSBURG 361 

officer who loses the confidence of his troops should 
have his position changed, whatever may be his ability ; 
but when I read the sentence I was not at all prepared 
for the application you were about to make. Expres- 
sions of discontent in the public journals furnish but 
little evidence of the sentiment of the army. I wish 
it were otherwise, even though all the abuse of myself 
should be accepted as the results of honest observation. 
Were you capable of stooping to it, you could easily 
surround yourself with those who would fill the press 
with your laudations, and seek to exalt you for what 
you had not done, rather than detract from the achieve- 
ments which will make you and your army the subject 
of history and the object of the world's admiration for 
generations to come. 

I am truly sorry to know that you still feel the effects 
of the illness you suffered last spring, and can readily 
understand the embarrassments you experience in 
using the eyes of others, having been so much accus- 
tomed to make your own reconnoissances. Practice 
will, however, do much to relieve that embarrassment, 
and the minute knowledge of the country which you 
have acquired will render you less dependent for topo- 
graphical information. 

But suppose, my dear friend, that I were to admit, 
with all their implications, the points which you pre- 
sent, where am I to find the new commander who is to 
possess the greater ability which you believe to be re- 
quired? I do not doubt the readiness with which you 
would give way to one who could accomplish all that 
you have wished, and you will do me the justice to 
believe that if Providence should kindly offer such a 
person for our use I would not hesitate to avail myself 
of his services. 

My sight is not sufficiently penetrating to discover 
such hidden merit, if it exists, and I have but used to 



362 ROBERT E. LEE 

you the language of sober earnestness when I have im- 
pressed upon you the propriety of avoiding all unneces- 
sary exposure to danger, because I felt our country 
could not bear to lose you. To ask me to substitute 
for you some one, in my judgment, more fit to com- 
mand or who would possess more of the confidence of 
the army, or of the reflecting men of the country, is to 
demand an impossibility. It only remains for me to 
hope that you will take all possible care of yourself, 
that your health and strength will be entirely restored, 
and that the Lord will preserve you for the important 
duties devolved upon you in the struggle of our suffer- 
ing country for the independence which we have en- 
gaged in war to maintain. 
As ever. 

Very respectfully and truly, 

Jefferson Davis. 

With these letters to portray the character of Lee, 
history will endorse with its infallible pen what the 
President of the Confederacy wrote: There was no 
better man to take his place. 

Though Lee failed of final success, to the student of 
history who weighs opportunities and compares re- 
sources, this in nowise mars his fame. With ammuni- 
tion almost exhausted, he lay in the face of the enemy 
twenty-four hours, and then, with Meade's great army 
pressing him, urged on by the now eager government 
and people of the Union, he marched slowly to the 
Potomac, which was in flood, and after lying ten days 
in the face of his antagonist, with the swollen Potomac 
at his back, brought off his army intact and undis- 



GETTYSBURG 363 

spirited, together with 4,000 prisoners, and having 
recrossed the Potomac on the 13th and 14th, and 
moved back to his old ground about Culpeper, he pro- 
ceeded to prepare for the next campaign. 

The chief disaster of Gettysburg lay not so much in 
the first repulse of the intrepid lines, which, in the face 
of a constantly increasing storm of shot and shell, 
swept across that deadly plain and on up the flaming 
slopes of Cemetery Ridge and Little Roundtop, as in 
the consequences which were soon disclosed. 



CHAPTER XIV 

AUTUMN OF 1863 

On finding that Lee had succeeded in crossing the 
Potomac, Gregg's cavahy undertook to cross the river: 
but two of Stuart's Brigades fell on him and drove him 
back to his own side with heavy loss. Lee having, a 
little later, moved up the valley of the Shenandoah, 
with a view of crossing the Blue Ridge into Loudoun, 
not only found the Shenandoah too high for fording, 
but that Meade, who had crossed the Potomac lower 
down, had seized and fortified the passes of the Blue 
Ridge. He accordingly marched on and crossed over 
by way of Chester Gap into Culpeper, where he posted 
himself on the Rapidan to prevent Meade's marching 
on Richmond, which was now uncovered. 

Meade was now by reason of his magnitude and the 
spirit of his troops formidable enough to require care- 
ful watching. It has been frequently remarked that 
Lee after Gettysburg made no further attempt to in- 
vade the country of the enemy. The fact is correct, 
but the reason given for it is mainly erroneous. The 
true reason was that his army had no shoes nor clothes/ 
It was said by Napoleon that an army marches on its 
belly; and it has been said with equal truth that while 
it can fight without shoes, it cannot march without 
them. Shoes were now more difficult to get in the 

364 



AUTUMN OF 1863 365 

Confederacy than guns. The need of clothes and shoes 
precipitated the battle of Gettysburg. The same want 
now effected what Meade with his great and gallant 
aiTmy could not have done — it held Lee within a cir- 
cumscribed field of operations. He could no longer 
lead his eager veterans to distant fields and exercise 
his masterly strategy. The South-west was almost as 
completely cut off by the capture of Vicksburg and 
the opening of the Mississippi as was Canada, and what 
the opened Mississippi failed to accomplish in this re- 
spect, the steadily dwindling lines to the south com- 
pleted. The South was, indeed, entering on its final 
period of exhaustion. 

Lee, having marched around Meade to Culpeper, 
now established his army in the well-known region 
among the head-waters of the Rappahannock and 
Rapidan, where his position was convenient for cover- 
ing the railroad at the same time that he could observe 
Meade and be ready to take advantage of any misstep 
he might make. Here he spent the remainder of the 
summer endeavoring to get his army refitted with 
shoes and clothing necessary to resume the offensive. 
Another reason for his remaining inactive during this 
period was that owing to the exigency in the South- 
west, where affairs were not going well, Longstreet was 
detached and sent out to Tennessee with two of his 
divisions, those of McLaws and Hood, to reinforce 
Bragg and defeat Rosecrans at Chickamauga, while 
Pickett's Division was detached for service below 
Petersburg, where Richmond was threatened from 
Norfolk and Suffolk. Longstreet was urgent to go, 



3G6 ROBERT E. LEE 

and when Lee, from Richmond, where he had been 
summoned by Mr. Davis for consultation, wrote him in 
August, urging him to "use every exertion to prepare 
the army for offensive operations," so as to bring 
General Meade out in the open field and crush his 
army, Longstreet wrote combating Lee's suggestions, 
and gave his opinion that the ''best opportunity for 
great results is in Tennessee." 

As the summer passed and Meade learned of the 
diminution of Lee's forces by the detachment of 
Longstreet, who had been sent to Tennessee, he began 
to conceive hopes of being able to force him back on 
Richmond. On September 4, Lee wrote his wife from 
camp, near Orange Court House: "You see I am still 
here. When I last wrote, the indications were that 
the enemy would move against us any day; but this 
past week he has been very quiet, and seems at present 
to continue so. I was out looking at him yesterday 
from Clark's Mountain. He has spread himself over 
a large surface and looks immense; but I hope will not 
prove as formidable as he looks." Lee was now on the 
alert to bar Meade's way, whichever direction he might 
take, and after waiting three weeks for Meade to take 
the steps he had apparently been contemplating, Lee 
followed his natural instinct and assumed the offensive. 
On October 9, leaving a force of cavalry and infan- 
try to guard his old position, he began a flank move- 
ment around Meade's right, which was substantially a 
repetition of the manoeuvre that had hurried Pope 
across the Rappahannock over a year before. Like 
Pope, Meade hastily withdrew to the north of the Rap 



! 



AUTUMN OF 1863 367 

pahannock. Then learning nothing definite of Lee's 
movements he retraced his steps and again crossed 
the Rappahannock and reoccupied Culpeper, leaving a 
corps at the crossings of the Rappahannock. Here he 
was informed that Lee, ignoring his manoeuvres, had 
on the 12th forced a crossing of the Rappahannock 
at Wliite Sulphur Springs, and having driven Gregg 
off, was marching northward. Meade was a master at 
moving his troops, and now, making a forced march 
that night, he was in Lee's rear next morning. Lee 
being out of rations, was forced to wait at Warrenton 
all of the 13th, and tliis dela}^ enabled Meade to pass 
by him. On the morning of the 14th Lee sent Ewell 
and A. P. Hill to Bristoe Station, hoping to make an 
effective attack on Meade's rear, but "some one blun- 
dered." Warren, being attacked by two of Hill's Di- 
visions, occupied a railway cut, and in the fight which 
ensued cut off and captured 5 guns, 2 stands of colors, 
and some 450 prisoners, and then marched on after 
Meade, who now concentrated at Centreville and 
awaited Lee's attack. Men groaned at a defeat which 
should have been a victory but for an inexplicable 
blunder.^ As, even had Meade's strongly fortified 
position been carried or turned, he could have fallen 
back on Alexandria, as Pope had done, Lee refrained 
from further attack and returned to his position on 
the Rappahannock. Meade promptly followed; but 
his cavalry under Kilpatrick was routed at Buckland, 
in a way to show that Stuart was not to be caught nap- 
ping, and to furnish the Army of Northern Virginia 

» S. P. Lee's " Life of William N. Pendleton." 



368 ROBERT E. LEE 

with many a joke on the "Buckland Races." The 
affair at Bristoe Station marred what would otherwise 
have been a completely successful manoeuvre. 

Such a fiasco was an experience to which the Sec- 
ond Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia was little 
accustomed, and the loss of Jackson was felt anew by 
his old command. Lee now returned toward Culpeper, 
forced to abandon the offensive by the want of shoes 
in his army. Lee wrote his wife on the 19th of Octo- 
ber: "I have returned to the Rappahannock. I did 
not pursue with the main army beyond Bristoe or 
Broad Run. Our advance went as far as Bull Run, 
where the enemy was entrenched, extending his right 
as far as Chantilly, in the yard of which he was 
building a redoubt. I could have thrown him far- 
ther back, but I saw no chance of bringing him to 
battle, and it would have only served to fatigue our 
troops by advancing farther. If they had been prop- 
erly provided with clothes, I would certainly have en- 
deavored to have thrown them north of the Potomac ; 
but thousands were barefooted, thousands with frag- 
ments of shoes, and all without overcoats, blankets, 
or warm clothing. I could not bear to expose them 
to certain suffering on an uncertain issue." 

On October 28 he wrote her a letter which threw a 
fine light on the situation of his army as regarded shoes 
and necessary clothing, and on his own simplicity of 
life. "I moved yesterday," he says, "into a nice pine 
thicket, and Perry is to-day engaged in constructing 
a chimney in front of my tent which will make it warm 
and comfortable. I have no idea when F. [his son, 



AUTUMN OF 1863 369 

Brigadier-General W. H. F. Lee] will be exchanged. 
The Federal authorities still resist all exchanges, be- 
cause they think it is to our interest to make them. 
Any desire expressed on our part for the exchange of 
any individual magnifies the difficulty, as they at once 
think some great benefit is to result to us from it. His 
detention is very grievous to me, and, besides, I want 
his services. I am glad you have some socks for the 
army. Send them to me. They will come safely. 
Tell the girls to send all they can. I wish they could 
make some shoes, too. We have thousands of bare- 
footed men. There is no news. General Meade, I be- 
lieve, is repairing the railroad, and I presume will come 
on again. If I could only get some shoes and clothes 
for the men, I would save him the trouble." 

The loss of Vicksburg had done more than the defeat 
at Gettysburg to overthrow the South. Thenceforth 
the South was cut in two. 

On the 7th of November, Meade, finding Lee not dis- 
posed to attack him or repeat the manoeuvre which had 
put Washington in a fright, and conscious of his own 
superiority in men and equipment, moved forward to 
the Rappahannock. His left, under French, crossed 
at Kelly's Ford; his right, under Sedgwick, came, about 
nightfall, on the Bridge Head, on the near side of the 
river, at Rappahannock Station, guarding the bridge, 
occupied by two of Early's Brigades. Making a dash 
for it, Russell's division rushed the pontoon bridge, 
surprised and captured the position, with 5 guns, 1,675 
men, and 8 stands of colors, with little loss and before 
the Confederates on the south side of the river knew 



370 ROBERT E. LEE 

that the point was being attacked. These "blunders on 
the part of some one" set the Second Corps to deplor- 
ing afresh the loss of their old commander. ''It makes 
me sick," wrote the young adjutant-general of the 
corps, who had been on Jackson's staff. It looked now 
as though Meade were i^reparing for a general attack, 
and with a view to drav/ing him on where he might 
renew his attack in a position where disparit}^ of 
numbers would not count for so much, Lee, on the 
night of the 8th of November, withdrew to the western 
bank of the Rapidan, and there awaited him in the 
position he had occupied in October. 

Finally, on the 26th of November, ]\Ieade, spurred 
on to attack Lee by the urgency of his government and 
the clamor of the press, moved southward and crossed 
the Rapidan at the lower fords below Lee's position, 
with the intention of manoeuvring him out of his posi- 
tion and attacking him. Lee promptl}^ "accepted the 
gage," and withdrawing his troops from his lines that 
night; by daylight next morning was on Meade's flank, 
prepared for any move he might make. With his 
cavalry in front to feel the enemy and ascertain his 
purpose, he moved his Second Corps under Early 
(Ewell being sick) to Locust Grove by the old Turn- 
pike and the Raccoon Ford Road, and his Third Corps 
by the Plank Road. Skirmishing ensued for a time, 
and about four o'clock it developed into a sharp en- 
gagement in which the enemy were driven back from 
the position they had assumed. That night, learning 
that Meade was moving in the direction of Orange 
Court House, Lee, believing that he would now with- 



AUTUMN OF 1863 371 

out doubt attack him, withdrew his army to the west 
side of ]\Iine Run and took a strong position on the 
heights above Mine Run, where he awaited Meade's 
attack for several days. But although Meade brought 
up his army, and apparently made every preparation 
for a general battle, on the morning of the 2d of Decem- 
ber he had drawn back beyond the Rappahannock. 
Warren, to whom the conduct of the assault had been 
confided, had found Lee's position too strong to give 
promise of its being successfully assaulted, and the 
expected battle never came off. Two days later Lee 
wrote his wife as follows: ''You will probably have seen 
that General Meade has retired to his old position on 
the Rappahannock without giving us battle. I had 
expected, from his movements and all that I had heard, 
that it was his intention to do so, and after the first 
day, when I thought it necessary to skirmish pretty 
sharply with him on both flanks to ascertain his views, 
I waited patiently his attack. On Tuesday, however, 
I thought he had changed his mind, and that night 
made preparations to move around his left next morn- 
ing and attack him. But when day dawned he was 
nowhere to be seen. He had commenced to withdraw 
at dark Tuesday evening. We pursued to the Rapidan, 
but he was over. Owing to the nature of the ground, 
it was to our advantage to receive rather than to make 
the attack, and as he about doubled us in numbers, 
I wished to have tha.t advantage. I am greatly dis- 
appointed at his getting off with so little damage, but 
we do not know what is best for us. I believe a kind 
God has ordered all things for our good." 



372 ROBERT E. LEE 

After this the weather became so severe that further 
operations were impossible, and the armies went into 
winter quarters, Lee along the Virginia Central Rail- 
way and in the vicinity of Orange, Meade in the region 
about Culpeper. The inaction was, however, much in 
favor of the North; for the South was rapidly being de- 
pleted. Lee's army was in a state of such destitution 
that it is a wonder the men could be kept together. 
Only their spirit enabled them to stand the hardships 
of the winter. Barefooted and hungry, they stood it 
out through the long months of a Virginia winter, and 
when it is considered that until they joined the army 
many of these men had never seen snow, and that none 
of them had ever experienced want of adequate cloth- 
ing, their resolution is a tribute to their patriotism 
which can never be excelled. That Lee himself en- 
dured hardships and suffered with them in their self- 
denial was sufficient for them. An incident of this 
period is related by Colonel Charles ]\Iarshall, General 
Lee's aide-de-camp. He says: ''While the army was 
on the Rapidan, in the winter of 1863-64, it became 
necessary, as was often the case, to put the men on 
very short rations. Their duty was hard, not only on 
the outposts during the winter, but in the construc- 
tion of roads, to facilitate comnRinication between the 
different parts of the army. One day General Lee 
received a letter from a private soldier whose name 
I do not now remember, informing him of the work 
that he had to do, and stating that his rations 
were not sufficient to enable him to undergo the fa- 
tigue. He said, however, that if it was absolutely 



AUTUMN OF 1863 373 

necessary to put him upon such short allowance, he 
would make the best of it, but that he and his com- 
rades wanted to know if General Lee was aware that 
his men were getting so little to eat, because if he was 
aware of it he was sure there must be some necessity 
for it. General Lee did not reply directly to the let- 
ter, but issued a general order in which he informed 
the soldiers of his efforts in their behalf, and that their 
privation was beyond his means of present relief, but 
assured them that he was making every effort to pro- 
cure sufficient supplies. After that there was not a 
murmur in the army, and the hungry men went cheer- 
fully to their hard work." 

Lee's private letters to his family speak in their 
simplicity with an eloquence which no rhetoric could 
equal. From his camp he writes to his wife on Jan- 
uary 24, 1864: ^'I have had to disperse the cavalry as 
much as possible to obtain forage for their horses, and 
it is that which causes trouble. Provisions for the 
men, too, are very scarce, and with very light diet and 
light clothing, I fear they suffer, but still they are 
cheerful and uncomplaining. I received a report from 
one division the other day, in which it was stated that 
over 400 men were barefooted and over 1,000 were 
without blankets." 

His letters to his family continually refer to the 
socks they knitted for his men, and at times he brought 
and delivered these socks himself. As he lay during 
this winter confronting Meade's well-equipped army, 
while his own men, ragged and barerooted and hungry, 
shivered and danced by turns, his mien was as calm and 



374 ROBERT E. LEE 

asoured as though the conditions had been reversed. 
But he must have faced often the stern and tragic 
fact that his resources, as small as they were tlien, 
were steadily dwindling. Whatever the inward grip 
on his heart of this secret knowledge, which like a vult- 
ure was tearing his vitals, to the outer world he was all 
tranquillity. Tranquillus in ardu'is was the mark of 
his character. 

In the necessary disposal of the cavalry to obtain 
forage, to which General Lee refers as above stated, the 
cavalry was stationed at Charlottesville, and General 
Lee's youngest son, who had been transferred the 
summer before to the cavalry, having sent him an in- 
vitation, received from him a repl}-, which shows how 
heavily the burden was weighing on his shoulders. 

Camp Orange Court House, 
January 17, 1864. 

I enclose a letter for you which has been sent to my 
care. I hope you are well and all around you. Tell 
Fitz I grieve over the hardships and sufferings of his 
men in their late expedition. I would have preferred 
his waiting for more favorable weather. He accom- 
plished much under the circumstances, but would 
have done more in l^etter weather. I am afraid he 
was anxious to get back to the ball. This is a bad 
time for such things. We have too grave subjects on 
hand to engage in such trivial amusements. I would 
rather his officers should entertain themselves in fat- 
tening their horses, healing their men, and recruiting 
their regiments. There arc too many Lees on the 
committee. I like them all to be present at battles, 
but can excuse them at Ijalls. But the saying is: 



AUTUMN OF 1863 375 

''Children will be children!" I think he had better 
move his camp farther from Charlottesville, and per- 
haps he will get more work and less play. He and I 
are too old for such assemblies. I want him to write 
me how his men are, his horses, and what I can do to 
fill up his ranks. 

At the end of the first week in February, in pursuance 
of a not very well-developed plan to hold Lee by a dem- 
onstration along the Rapidan while an advance was 
made on Richmond by way of the Peninsula, Sedgwick 
was moved forward as if to bring on a battle; but after 
a sharp skirmish, in which he lost over a thousand men, 
he retired to his original position, while below Rich- 
mond the movements j^roved equally futile. General 
Lee, writing of the affair, says (in a letter to Mrs. Lee, 
dated February 16, 1864) : ''This day last week we were 
prepared for battle, but I believe the advance of the 
enemy was only to see where we were and whether they 
could injure us. They place their entire loss in killed, 
wounded, and missing at 1,200, but I think that is 
exaggerated. Our old friend, Sedgwick, was in com- 
mand." 

At the end of February General Lee narrowly es- 
caped capture at the hands of a cavalry force, under 
the command of Colonel Dahlgren, who, in a bold raid 
on Richmond, struck the Virginia Central Railroad a 
short time after General Lee passed by in a train. 
Other attempts having failed, a new method was at- 
tempted for the capture of R^ichmond. Knowing that 
the city was almost totall}' unprotected on the south 
side and contained only local guards, it was conceived 



376 ROBERT E. LEE 

that it might be seized by a bold dash made by a picked 
body of cavalry, who should ride around Lee's flank, 
and, striking across country, should cross the James 
some thirty miles above Richmond, where it was ford- 
able, and then, turning down its right bank, enter 
Richmond. The plan was boldly conceived and begun; 
but it came to a hapless end. Three columns, number- 
ing 4,000 sabres, set out, respectively under Kilpatrick, 
Custer, and Dahlgren. Kilpatrick from the north side 
penetrated the outer defences of Richmond, but was 
driven out, and only the last named force ever reached 
the James. Here, finding it in flood and beyond ford- 
ing, the "contraband guide" was hanged "according 
to contract" and an attempt was made to duplicate 
Stuart's feat and make their way out down the north 
bank of the river. The force was, however, met and 
dispersed and Colonel Dahlgren was killed in a charge. 
On his person were found plans which related to the 
capture of Richmond, and sent up to Richmond, as 
among them were entries in a memorandum book 
which created a great furor, and were made the sub- 
ject of a special cartel by the Confederate Govern- 
ment, which Lee forwarded to General Meade. But 
General Meade promptly disclaimed any knowledge 
of the incendiary portions of them, and Colonel Dahl- 
gren 's father, in a memoir of his son, has declared 
them a forgery.^ General Long states that "it is but 
justice to the memory of Dahlgren to say that no act 

'See J. D. McCabe's "Life of Lee," p. 651; Memoir of Colonel 
Ulric Dahlgren; Fitz Lee's "Lee," p. 324; Southern Historical Society 
Papers, April, 1877. 



AUTUMN OF 1863 377 

of cruelty was perpetrated by him during this hapless 
expedition." The incident, which called forth recrim- 
inating charges of great bitterness at the time, brought 
from Lee a temperate and wise letter, in which he dis- 
cusses on the broadest grounds the futility of retalia- 
tion, which had been suggested to him, and calls atten- 
tion to an alleged outrage by some of his own men, who 
had held up a train and robbed the passengers. 

The North was enabled to recruit her armies by 
drafting all the men she needed, and her command of 
the sea gave her Europe as a recruiting ground. On 
October 17, 1863, the President of the United States 
ordered a draft for 300,000 men. On February 1, 1864, 
he called for 500,000, allowing a deduction for quotas 
filled under the preceding draft; and on March 14, 
1864, he issued an additional call for 200,000 more, 
"to provide an additional reserve for all contingencies." ^ 

The South was almost spent. Her spirit was un- 
quenched, and was, indeed, unquenchable; but her 
resources, both of treasure and men, were wellnigh 
exhausted. Her levies for reserves of all men between 
fifteen and sixty drew from President Davis the lament 
that she was grinding the seed-corn of the Confederacy. 
Yet more significantly it satisfied the new general who, 
with his laurels fresh from the dearly won heights of 
Missionary Ridge, succeeded (on March 12) the high- 

' Under the first call 369,380 men were drawn, of whom 52,288 paid 
commutation; under the second 259,575 men were drawn, of whom 
32,678 paid commutation. Again, on July 18, 1864, a call was made 
for 500,000 more men, of whom 385,163 were furnished; and on Decem- 
ber 19, 1864, 300,000 more were called for and 211,755 were furnished. 
(Rhodes's "History," vol. IV, p. 429, citing "Statistical Rec. Phis- 
terer," pp. 6, 8, 9.) 



378 ROBERT E. LEE 

minded Meade in the command of the Union army on 
the Potomac, that a policy of attrition was one, and 
possibly the only one, which must win in the end. 
Clear-headed, aggressive, and able, he began his cam- 
paign with this policy, from which he never varied, 
though the attrition wore away two men in his own 
ranks for every one in Lee's army. 

In the spring of 1864 the President of the United 
States, recognizing that the people, like himself, had 
grown weary of having generals beaten and armies 
routed by Lee with an army manifestly inferior in num- 
bers and equipment, took a new step. It was clear now 
to his mind that the South could not be conquered so 
long as Lee, at the head of an army of veteran troops, 
had the power to manoeuvre them at will. It was 
equally clear to him that, whatever the public might 
think, the South was at last becoming exhausted, 
while the North was steadily growing stronger. He 
had some time before come to the conclusion that not 
Richmond but Lee's army was the proper objective 
of the Union armies, and he had so written his com- 
manding general. Hooker. He now took a step further. 
In this state of the case, he set aside Meade, who had 
failed to destroy Lee after months of endeavor, anil 
called to his aid a general hitherto a stranger to the 
East, but one who, in the West, had given evidence of 
abilities which promised to prove the kind which wero 
needed in the situation in Virginia. He was a fighter, 
and so sturdy was he that he was as ready to fight 
after a defeat as before. 

In the West were several generals who had given 



AUTUMN OF 1863 379 

that proof of unusual abilities — success — which had 
been lacking in the East, where the conunanders were 
opposed by Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. 
Grant; Thomas, Sherman, and McPherson had all shown 
military gifts of a high order. Among these the first 
in order having such gifts was, possibly. Grant, though 
it took a long time for his government to recognize 
them, and it required the close study of a special agent 
in the person of the Assistant Secretary of War before 
the lot fell upon him. Like Mr. Lincoln, he was of 
Southern blood and affiliations by way of Kentucky. 
He was, however, a native of Ohio. He had gradu- 
ated at West Point in 1843, and had served with dis- 
tinction in Mexico, as had most of the soldiers on both 
sides who attained high rank during the Civil War. 
He first attracted attention at Molino del Rey, where 
he got a piece of artillery up in a church tower and 
contributed to the success of the day. Having fallen 
into habits of intemperance, he had left the army and 
for eight years had lived in poverty and obscurity, 
first on a farm in Missouri and afterward as a clerk in 
his father's store in Galena, 111. On the outbreak of 
the war he had written offering his services to the 
government, but his letter appears to have been ig- 
nored; and he had thereupon shown such zeal and effi- 
ciency in the organization of the volunteers in Illinois 
that he was appointed by the governor of that State 
colonel of the 21st Regiment of Illinois volunteers. 
His ability presently brought him command of the 
Department of Cairo, and when he captured Fort Henry, 
on February 6, 1862, and, following a sharp defeat, in 



380 ROBERT E. LEE 

his temporary absence, of his forces besieging Fort 
Donelson, availed himself promptly of a fatal error of 
the Confederate commander and captured this fort also, 
with its garrison of nearly 12,000 men, he began to be 
esteemed a man to reckon with. In command of the 
Army of the Tennessee, he had narrowly missed having 
his army destroyed at Pittsburg Landing in the first 
day's fight of the battle of Shiloh, and had probably 
been saved by the death of Albert Sidney Johnston in 
the hour of victory, and certainly by the opportune 
arrival of Buell's army next day. But he had shown 
the resolution and serenity of a constant mind and had 
continued fighting next day as stoutly as if he had won 
the day before. He had indeed the gift never to know 
when he was beaten. At Vicksburg he had increased 
greatly his reputation by his able transfer of his army 
from one side of the Mississippi to the other, followed 
by his brilliant manoeuvres and the successful siege 
and capture of this important post which had hitherto 
guarded the Mississippi. And finally, while suffering 
from a severe injury, he had ridden to Chattanooga, 
where matters, following on Rosecrans's defeat at 
Chickamauga, were in a bad way, and, arriving "tired, 
dirty, and well," had immediately so straightened out 
the tangles and infused spirit and courage that within 
a month he won the battle of Missionary Ridge, or 
Chattanooga (November 23-25), and secured posses- 
sion of Chattanooga and Knoxville and command of 
Eastern Tennessee and the adjacent regions. Sucli, 
in brief, was the previous record of the man to whom 
Mr. Lincoln now turned for aid. 



AUTUMN OF 1863 381 

On the 10th of March/ 1864, Mr. Lincoln appointed 
General Ulysses S, Grant lieutenant-general in com- 
mand of all the armies of the Union, and General Grant, 
on the 23d of March, took personal command of the 
armies in the East with the stipulation, it is said, that 
he was to be given such troops as he needed and was 
not to be interfered with by the government in Wash- 
ington. It was without doubt a wise precaution that 
he took, for otherwise he might never have survived 
the Wilderness and Cold Harbor. 

Grant was now nearly forty-two years old, while Lee 
was fifty-seven. We have pictures of them both as 
they impressed men capable of drawing their portraits. 

This is a picture of Grant given by Richard H. Dana, 
who fell in with him at Willard's Hotel as he was about 
to leave for the army on the Rapidan: ''A short, 
round-shouldered man, in a very tarnished major-gen- 
eral's uniform. . . . There was nothing marked in his 
appearance. He had no gait, no station, no manner, 
rough, light-brown whiskers, a blue eye, and rather a 
scrubby look withal. A crowd formed round him; 
men looked, stared at him, as if they were taking his 
likeness, and two generals were introduced. Still, I 
could not get his name. It was not Hooker. Who 
could it be? He had a cigar in his mouth, and rather 
the look of a man who did, or once did, take a little too 
much to drink. I inquired of the bookkeeper. 'That 
is General Grant.' I joined the starers. I saw that 
the ordinary, scrubby-looking man, with a slightly 

' The commission was dated March 9, and was delivered to him by 
Mr. Lincoln in the presence of his cabinet the following day. 



382 ROBERT E. LEE 

seedy look, as if he was out of office and on half pay, 
and nothing to do but hang round the entry of Wil- 
lard's, cigar in mouth, had a clear blue eye, and a look 
of resolution, as if he could not be trifled with, and an 
entire indifference to the crowd about him. Straight 
nose, too. Still, to see him talking and smoking in the 
lower entry of Willard's, in that crowd, in such times — 
the generalissimo of our armies, on whom the destiny 
of the empire seemed to hang! ... He gets over the 
ground queerh'. He does not march, nor quite walk; 
but pitches along as if the next step would bring him 
on his nose. But his face looks firm and hard, and his 
eye is clear and resolute, and he is certainly natural, 
and clear of all appearance of self-consciousness. How 
war, how all great crises, bring us to the one-man 
power!" ^ 

It should be said, and the fact has been much over- 
looked, that while to Grant's dogged resolution to wear 
out his opponent, no matter what the cost to his own 
side, was due in the end the exhaustion of the South ; 3''et 
the tactical detail with which the military operations 
were conducted was to a considerable extent attribu- 
table to Meade. The commander at Gettysburg has 
never gotten the credit generally that he deserves. 
Because he could not destroy Lee at or after Gettys- 
burg, and failed to attain a decided success in the 
autumn campaign following, he lost the prestige that . 
he should have had for an accomplishment greater than 
any other general had attained. And in the campaign 

> Adams's "Dana," vol. II, p. 272. Rhodcs's "History of the Uniteil 
States," vul. IV, pp. 438, 439. 



AUTUMN OF 1863 383 

of 1864-65 he conducted the mihtary operations of the 
Army of the Potomac, though he did not dictate the 
poHcy. Grant himself declared later in his official re- 
port of July 22, 1865, that, while he commanded all the 
armies, he had tried, as far as possible, to leave General 
Meade in independent command of the Army of the 
Potomac. "My instructions for that army," he said, 
"were all through him and were general in their nature, 
leaving all the details and execution to him." ^ He 
directed the general operations, but Meade directed 
mainly the movements of the several corps and under 
him fought the battles. Yet undoubtedly Grant was 
the master spirit and the abler soldier. 

Mr. Lincoln had some time before reached the con- 
clusion, as most other thinking men had, that so long 
as Lee's army remained in the field, commanded by 
Lee, the South could not be subjugated. And in this 
view General Grant wholly concurred. The destruc- 
tion of Lee's army, therefore, became the avowed ob- 
ject of both Lincoln and Grant. The method was sim- 
ple in conception — to give man for man — or, if that 
would not accomplish the object, to give two men for 
one till the dread tale was exhausted. In execution 
it required not only man for man, not only two men 
for one, but two men for every one that Lee had in his 
army. 

The infantry of the Army of the Potomac was, prior 
to the advance on Richmond in the spring of 1864, 
organi:^ed on Meade's suggestion and formed in three 
grand corps, the Second, Fifth, and Sixth Corps, com- 

1 Humphreys' "Virginia Campaign of 1864 and 1865," p. 6. 



384 ROBERT E. LEE 

manded respectively by the three veteran generals, 
Hancock, Warren, and Sedgwick, each corps numbering 
about 25,000 men. To these were soon added the 
Ninth Corps under Burnside. The cavalry was com- 
manded by General Sheridan, a young officer whom 
Grant had brought from the West with him, having 
observed in him unusual abilities and the fighting 
quality which he himself possessed. 

In general terms the plan adopted for the new cam- 
paign was to have Butler, who commanded at Fortress 
Monroe, move on Richmond by way of the James, the 
York, and the Peninsula, and for Grant to march the 
Army of the Potomac by a route parallel with the 
Richmond and Fredericksburg Railway, which railway, 
with the Rappalmnnock and the Potomac, formed his 
line of communication with his base and with Washing- 
ton. This base he established at Belle Plain. There 
were men and supplies of all kinds in abundance. The 
difficulty in the way was the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia with its general. This army lay along the Rapidan 
in the Piedmont, about Orange and Gordonsville, at 
the junction of the Orange and Alexandria Railway, 
and the Virginia Central Railway, which led south- 
east to Richmond and west to the valley of Virginia 
and to the south-west. One plan which was con- 
sidered at Washington was to move by Lee's left 
flank against this important line of communication 
and thence on Richmond; but for good reasons this 
plan was discarded and the movement b}' Lee's right 
flank was adopted. This latter plan, though it led 
through more difficult country than the other, would 



AUTUMN OF 1863 385 

place Grant's lines of communication on the opposite 
side of his army from Lee and would effectually se- 
cure them from attack. It would also enable him 
to cover Washington and receive reinforcements as 
needed. 

Grant's plan was a comprehensive one. In brief, it 
was to ''attack all along the line," and thus, first, keep 
all the Confederate forces fully engaged, so that one 
army should not be able to reinforce any other; sec- 
ondly, destroy all the lines of communication between 
Richmond and the South and South-west; thirdly, 
destroy all the sources of supply of the Southern armies; 
fourthly, destroy those armies themselves and finally 
capture Richmond. In accordance with this plan, Sher- 
man, with his army of 100,000 men, was to march from 
Chattanooga eastward through Georgia and the Caro- 
linas; Sigel, with his army of 20,000 men, was to 
march from Western Virginia on the two lines that con- 
nected Richmond with the valley of Virginia at Staun- 
ton and with the South-west at Lynchburg; Butler 
was to march on Richmond with his army of 40,000 
men from Fortress Monroe by way of the Peninsula 
and the James and co-operate with Grant; and finally. 
Grant himself was to march on Richmond with his great 
army of 140,000 men by way of the region lying between 
the Virginia Central Railroad and the Richmond and 
Fredericksburg Railroad. 

On the day agreed on, the 4th of May, the campaign 
began. Grant crossed the Rapidan on his march to 
Richmond, Butler moved on Richmond from Fortress 
Monroe by way of the James, Sherman set out on his 



386 ROBERT E. LEE 

march across the South, and Sigel proceeded with his 
movements; a cohimn of 6,000 men, under Averell, 
marching on South-west Virginia, while Sigel him- 
self, with his main army, moved on the upper Shenan- 
doah Valley to menace the Virginia Central Railway and 
the Railway from Charlottesville to Lynchburg and the 
South-west. All of these operations held direct rela- 
tion with the Richmond campaign,* and eventually 
all contributed their full share to its successful termina- 
tion. For in the end Richmond fell because its lines 
of communication with the region which supplied Lee's 
army were destroyed. 

Grant, resolved on his policy of '^persistent hammer- 
ing" (a phrase coined by him after the events which 
proved its effectiveness), and, assured of vast levies and 
of a free hand, to carry out his plan on his own line no 
matter what the cost, crossed the Rapidan on the night 
of the 3d of May, 1864. Marching by Ely and Ger- 
mana Fords, as Lee had predicted he would, he com- 
mitted himself boldly to the tangled forest of the Wil- 
derness, where one year before Hooker had met such 
signal defeat. His army numbered over 140,000 men 
of all arms — more than double the number that Lee 
now commanded — and he had 318 field guns. His 
equipment was possibly the best that any army could 
boast that ever took the field. His baggage train 
would, as he states, have stretched in line to Richmond, 
sixty-odd miles away. Lee had, with which to oppose 
him, 62,000 men of all arms and 224 guns. But the 
men were the Army of Northern Virginia, and a better 

' "The Shenandoah Valley in 1864," George E. Pond, p. 5. 



AUTUMN OF 1863 387 

weapon was never fitted to the hand of a more skilful 
master. Whatever measure of fame he had attained 
hitherto, it was to be more than doubled in the ensuing 
campaign. 

Lee has been criticised of late for not having posted 
Longstreet nearer to the prospective battle-field of the 
Wilderness than Gordonsville. It was not a matter of 
choice with him, but of necessity. The dispersion of 
his troops was due to the ever-growing difficulty of 
subsistence. He probably knew as well as his critics 
the disadvantages of such wide dispersion, and had his 
orders for their concentration been promptly carried 
out, he would have struck Grant on the first day with 
his full force instead of with only half of it. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 

If Grant had harbored any delusion that Lee was a 
general strong only in defensive operations, he had rea- 
son quickly to be undeceived. Lee, who, for reasons 
of his own, had permitted him to cross the river un- 
opposed, prepared to strike him amid the tangles of 
the Wilderness, where his superiority in men and arms 
might prove less preponderant, and two days later, 
having called in his widely separated divisions — sepa- 
rated for the want of subsistence — though he was out- 
numbered two to one^ — threw himself upon him, in- 
flicting upon him losses before which any other general 
who had yet commanded the Army of the Potomac 
would have recrossed the river, and even Grant re- 
coiled. For two days (the 5th and 6th) the battle 
raged, and Lee forced Grant, with losses of 17,666 men,^ 
from his direct line of march and led him to call on his 
government for reinforcements. ''Send to Belle Plain," ' 
he wrote on the 10th, "all the infantry you can rake 
and scrape." And he needed them all. On the even- 
ing of the second day an attack similar to Jackson's at 
Chancellorsville was made on Grant's flank, and his 

' Rhodes's "History of the United States," IV, p. 480. Humphreys' 
"Virginia Campaign of 1864 and 1865," p. 17. 

^ The Century Co.'s " Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," IV, p. 182. 

388 



THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 389 

left taken in reverse was driven back when an accident 
similar to that which changed the issue of that day 
changed this day's issue. As Longstreet, who com- 
manded the advancing troops, rode down the Plank 
Road accompanied by Generals Kershaw and Jenkins, 
a volley was poured into them by his own men. Jen- 
kins was killed and Longstreet dangerously wounded. 
It stopped the movement which otherwise might have 
forced Grant back across the Rapidan. Lee's forces 
were largely outnumbered, but to make good the dif- 
ference Lee offered at more than one critical moment to 
lead them in person. Officers and men alike refused 
to advance while he remained at a point of danger, and 
he was forced to the rear. But not only in the battle 
of the 6th, but also in the battle of the 10th and in the 
furious fight at the "bloody angle," where, when his 
army was imperilled, he again rode forward to inspire 
his straining troops and was again driven by them 
to the rear, the fact that he had felt it necessary to 
place himself at their head called forth new efforts 
from the jaded soldiers and stirred them to redoubled 
valor. 

''These men. General," said Gordon, as he rode with 
him down the lines at Spottsylvania, where they rested 
for a moment prior to the final charge, ''are the brave 
Virginians." Lee uttered no word. He simply re- 
moved his hat and passed bare-headed along the line. 
I had it from one who witnessed the act. "It was," 
said he, "the most eloquent address ever delivered." 
And a few minutes later as the men advanced to the 
charge, he heard a youth, as he ran forward crying and 



390 ROBERT E. LEE 

reloading his musket, shout through his tears that ''any 
man who would not fight after what General Lee said 
was a coward." 

In no battle of the war did Lee's genius shine forth 
more brightly than in the great battle of Spottsylvania 
Court House, where, after the bloody battle of the Wil- 
derness, he divined Grant's plans, and again cutting 
him off from the object of his desire, threw himself 
upon him in a contest whose fury may be gauged by the 
fact that the musketry fire continued in one unbroken 
roar for seventeen hours, and trees were shorn down 
by the musket balls. 

By the evening of the 7th, while his staff were yet 
in darkness as to Grant's next move, Lee, with his un- 
erring sense of the soldier, had divined it, and he sent 
General Anderson with his division to relieve Stuart 
at Spottsylvania.^ His adjutant-general, who was sent 
to apprise Stuart of the approach of the infantry, found 
him already engaged. The supports arrived just in 
time ; for the cavalry had been driven back, and Grant 
believed that he already occupied the Court House, as 
he reported in his despatch of the 8th. But Lee's 
promptness ''deranged this part of the programme," 
driving him back and holding him off during a week's 
fierce fighting, when Grant, having lost 40,000 men, 
finding his enemy too obstinate and ready to die in the 
last ditch, drew off by the flank toward the southward, 
whereupon Lee again headed him and, facing him at 
Hanover Junction, forced him down the north bank of 
the Pamunkey to Hanovertown. 

' Taylor's "General Lee," p. 238. 



THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 391 

''Before the lines of Spottsylvania/' says Swinton, 
''the Army of the Potomac had for twelve days and 
nights engaged in a fierce wrestle in which it had done 
all that valor may do to carry a position by nature and 
art impregnable. In this contest; unparalleled in its 
continuous fury and swelling to the proportions of a 
campaign, language is inadequate to convey an impres- 
sion of the labors, fatigues, and sufferings of those who 
fought by day, only to march by night from point to 
point of the long line and renew the fight on the morrow. 
Above 40,000 men had already fallen in the bloody 
encounters of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, and 
the exhausted army began to lose its spirits." 

Such was the defence which Lee presented to his 
able antagonist and his great army after the exhaus- 
tion of the hungry winter of '64. Had he not been ill 
and half delirious in his ambulance when Grant at- 
tempted to cross the North Anna and failed to get his 
centre over after his two wings were across, Grant's 
star might have set on the banks of the North Anna 
instead of rising to its zenith at Appomattox. But 
Lee was suddenly stricken down, and while he was mur- 
muring in his semi-delirium, "We must strike them — 
we must never let them pass us again," Grant, after 
the most anxious night of the war, drew back his wings 
and slowly moved down the Pamunkey to find Lee still 
across his path at the historic levels of Cold Harbor, 
where valor and constancy rose to their highest point. 

"I stood recently in the wood where Gregg's Tex- 
ans put on immortality," wrote a Southern historian, 
"where Kershaw led three of his brigades in person to 



392 ROBERT E. LEE 

compensate them for the absence of the fourth." ^ It 
was this need to compensate their troops for want of 
reserves or equipment which so often led the generals 
of the Confederacy to the firing line. But it was a 
costly expedient. Four times, in what appeared the 
very hour of complete victory, the prize was stricken 
from the hand by the commander being shot from his 
saddle. First, when General Albert Sidney Johnston 
was slain at Shiloh, in the moment of victory. Next, 
when, at Seven Pines, Joseph E. Johnston was struck 
from his horse, and what might have proved a crush- 
ing defeat for McClellan was turned into an indecisive 
battle. Again, when Jackson was driving all before 
him at Chancellorsville, and fell, like Wolfe, victorious. 
And finally, when, in the Wilderness, Longstreet was 
wounded and incapacitated at the critical moment when 
victory hovered over his arms. 

It is related that on one occasion during a battle 
Lee, being asked by his staff to leave one spot after 
another where he had posted himself, finally exclaimed, 
''I wish I knew where my place is on the battle-field. 
Wherever I go some one tells me it is not the place for 
me." 

In fact, so far from Lee being chiefly good in defence, 
the quality of his military spirit appears to one who 
studies his career to have been distinctly aggressive, 
possibly even too aggressive. This is Longstreet's 
charge against him. No captain ever knew better the 
value of a quarter of an hour or the importance of strik- 

' Leigh Robinson's Address on the Wilderness Campaign, Memorial 
Volume, Army of Northern Virginia. 



THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 393 

ing first when the enemy was preparing to deliver his 
blow. In truth, he was, as Henderson declares, an 
ardent fighter, and possessed in an extraordinary de- 
gree the qualities of both physical and moral courage. 
Lee's personal daring was the talk of his army. ''I 
hear on all sides of your exposing yourself," wrote 
one of his sons during the Wilderness campaign, urging 
him to be more careful for the sake of the cause. And 
again and again, at some moment of supreme crisis, as 
at the Wilderness when Longstreet's van appeared at 
the critical moment, and as at the "Bloody Angle" at 
Spottsylvania, which Grant had seized and where he 
was massing his picked troops to the number of 50,000, 
he rode forward to put himself at the head of his ex- 
hausted soldiery to lead them in a charge on which hung 
the fate of his army. Yet, as Henderson says, in dis- 
cussing Lee's audacity in attacking with an inferior 
force McClellan's well-equipped army, secure in their 
entrenchments, "he was no hare-brained leader, but a 
profound thinker, following the highest principles of 
the military art." That this will be the final verdict 
of history there can be little doubt. 

After crossing the Rapidan the advance of Grant 
by the flank was under almost continuous attack by 
Lee. "Measured by casualties," says Rhodes, in his 
history of this campaign, "the advantage was with the 
Confederates." This far from expresses the real fact 
that Grant received a mauling which, as Lee's adju- 
tant-general. Colonel Walter H. Taylor, said the next 
day in his note-book, would have sent any other gen- 
eral who had hitherto commanded the Union army back 



394 ROBERT E. LEE 

in haste across the river. It was Grant's fortitude 
which saved him, and led him to tell General James H. 
Wilson that he would fight again. As Lee had as- 
saulted at the Wilderness, so again at Spottsylvania he 
barred the way of his indomitable antagonist, and again 
and again forced the fighting, until, after holding him 
at the North Anna, where he offered battle, he had 
wedged Grant from his direct march on Richmond and 
forced him down the left bank of the Pamunkey to 
end at last his direct march on Richmond on the doubly 
bloody field of Cold Harbor, the only battle which 
Grant declared afterward he would not have fought 
over again under the same circumstances. 

Foiled in that campaign of his immediate object, 
and having lost more men than Lee had at any time 
in his entire army, Grant adopted a new line of attack, 
and secretly crossing to the south side of the James, 
which he might at any time have reached by water 
without the loss of a man, attempted to seize Peters- 
burg, as McClellan had planned to do, by a coup, but, 
failing in his object, began to lay siege to that place 
with a view to cutting off Richmond from the South, 
a feat which he only accomplished after eight months' 
fighting, in which he lost over 60,000 more men. 

Such in general terms was the last and, possibly, the 
greatest campaign of Lee. But as so much of Lee's 
fame as a soldier must rest on this final campaign in 
which he showed new powers and resisted the mights- 
forces thrown against him until the South collapsed 
from exhaustion, it is proper to give for those who 



THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 395 

may be interested in his military career a more detailed 
account of his masterly defence of Richmond and show 
clearly the reason of its ultimate failure. 

Wlien Grant, on the evening of the 4th of May, 1864, 
found the last of his four army corps on the south 
side of the Rapidan without a shot having been fired 
save by the pickets along the stream, he undoubtedly 
felt that he had taken a long step toward Richmond. 
Unlike McClellan, he did not overestimate his oppo- 
nent's strength, nor did he, like Hooker, falter in the 
presence of his masterly ability. He had supreme 
self-confidence based on rare courage and rare ability 
to command and to fight, and he knew that he out- 
numbered Lee more than two to one, and that in his 
army were the flower of the North, men as valorous 
as ever drew breath. He knew that Lee's forces were 
dispersed over a considerable extent of country in the 
open region about Orange and Gordonsville from twenty 
to thirty miles to the westward, and that they were ill- 
clad, ill-shod, and ill-fed. It was, accordingly, without 
a tremor that, having crossed the river unopposed, he 
boldly conrnnitted himself to the narrow roads that led 
southward through the western part of the Wilder- 
ness, in the assurance that Lee would throw his army 
across his path somewhere beyond the Wilderness, and 
that in the battle which would thus be joined he would 
; defeat him. Lee, however, had other plans than those 
j Grant assumed he would follow. He had divined 
I Grant's plans as well as if he had sat with him at his 
I council board, and he had formed his own. He had 
I predicted to his generals that Grant would soon move 



396 ROBERT E. LEE 

and would cross the Rapidan at the very fords he se- 
lected. Accordingly, he had given his orders, and on the 
day that Grant crossed the river and headed for Rich- 
mond, Lee struck his head-quarters tent, and send- 
ing orders to Anderson at Rapidan to follow without 
delay with his division, and to Longstreet at Gordons- 
ville to follow with his two divisions there, he himself 
took E well's Corps — two brigades — and two of Hill's Di- 
visions, with artillery and cavalry, and struck straight 
for Grant's army. Marching in two columns, Ewell to 
the left on the Turnpike and Hill on the old Plank 
Road, he pushed forward, and that night, while Grant 
supposed Lee was still about Orange or moving south- 
ward, Ewell 's advance guard bivouacked within four 
miles of Warren's corps, which bivouacked at the old 
Wilderness tavern at the intersection of the Germana 
Plank Road and the Orange Turnpike. Still unsus- 
pecting Lee's approach, Grant, on the 5th, moved on 
through the Wilderness toward Richmond, his army in 
two columns — on the right Warren's and Sedgwick's 
corps, heading for Parker's store, on the Plank Road 
toward the western edge of the Wilderness, while Han- 
cock's corps (the Second) took the route to Shady 
Grove Church, to the south-eastward. It was not 
long, however, before Lee made known his intention to 
attack without waiting for Grant to emerge from the 
Wilderness. Ewell, advancing on the Turnpike at right 
angles to the Federal line of march, quickly came in 
contact with Griffin's division, which Warren had 
posted on the Pike to cover his flank during his march, 
and was soon heavily engaged. Warren, finding Ewell 's 



THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 397 

Corps on his right, formed Hne of battle, and Sedgwick 
forming on his right, they advanced and attacked 
Ewell in heavy force. Meanwhile Getty's division was 
sent by Sedgwick to hold Hill, who was advancing on 
the Plank Road toward Parker's store, until Hancock 
could arrive with the Second Corps. Warren's sharp 
attack on Ewell was at first successful, for the Confed- 
erates had not on the field more than half the number 
of the Federals who attacked them.^ But rallying, the 
Confederates swept forward, and not only regained the 
ground they had lost, but captured four guns and a 
large number of prisoners. But as the fight slackened 
on the left, where Ewell was pushing Warren back 
along the Turnpike, it began to increase in fury along 
Lee's right, where, on the Plank Road, Heth's and 
Wilcox's Divisions of Lee's Second Corps were hold- 
ing back the masses of Grant's Second Corps. This 
they did all the afternoon, stubbornly maintaining 
their ground against the repeated assaults of Hancock's 
well-led divisions. Happily for Lee's army, the ground 
he had selected on which to bring Grant to bay was 
well adapted for his purpose. As in the battle of 
Chancellorsville, he had chosen the Wilderness for his 
battle-ground, because its tangles of far-stretching 
forest, intersected by only a few roads and broken by 
but a few openings, prevented the preponderant num- 
bers of the enemy in men and guns from being availed 
of by his antagonist. 
Lee, however, when he marched straight for Grant's 

* Humphreys' "Virginia Campaign of '64 and '65," p. 17. Rhodes's 
"History of the United States," IV, p. 440. Nicolay and Hay, YUI, 
)p. 352. 



398 ROBERT E. LEE 

army with his Second Corps and part of his Third 
Corps, had expected that Longstreet, who was at 
Gordonsville, httle more than ten miles further away 
from his ol^ject of attack than he himself was, would 
follow inmiediately and join him not later than the 
afternoon of the 5th. To insure this he had sent him 
as guide an officer who knew the roads, to pilot him. 
But Longstreet was incurably slow. A large, heavy, 
ponderous man, his movements were correspondingly 
slow, and possibly his mental operations partook of 
the same deliberateness. Wliether it was at Seven 
Pines or at Malvern Hill, at Second ]\Ianassas, or 
Gettysburg, or the Wilderness, he was late; and in 
this instance, as in those which had preceded it, he 
came near causing the most serious consequences to 
Lee's army. Had Longstreet been up when Ewell 
made his gallant attack, or even when Wilcox and 
Heth, in the afternoon, were holding on with despera- 
tion to the lines against which Hancock was dashing 
his straining brigades, an advance might have been 
made which might possibly have driven Grant back 
toward the Rapidan and have saved the carnage of 
the succeeding weeks. Longstreet had, however, sent 
off the guide furnished him and had subsequently 
missed the road. So, when darkness fell on Wilcox's 
and Heth's exhausted divisions in the Wilderness 
woods, the First Corps of the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia was going into bivouac at Verdiersville, some 
ten miles away. Fortunately, Longstreet was fully 
awake now to the urgency of the situation, of which 
Lee had apprised him, and, breaking camp soon after 




The Wilderness 



THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 399 

midnight, he pushed forward for the Wilderness, within 
whose western tangles the armies of Grant and Lee lay 
confronting each other. Had he been two hours later it 
might have been too late to save the situation. As it 
was, he was barely in time to save the rest of Lee's 
army from, possibly, irretrievable disaster. Lee's plan 
was that which he so often adopted with success: to 
assail one wing of the enemy — this time Grant's right 
— and while doing so to mass his forces on the enemy's 
other wing and overwhelm it. Wlien night fell on the 
5th, each commander knew that the next day's sun 
would rise on a great battle, and each prepared to 
take the offensive. Grant, whose plan was to use his 
preponderant numbers and attack along his whole 
line, prepared to move to the attack at five. Lee 
was so sure that Longstreet and Anderson would both 
be in place that the exhausted divisions of Wilcox and 
Heth had been told they would be withdrawn and their 
places taken by the fresh troops. Lee was obliged by 
Longstreet's absence to wait before advancing his 
right, and on the left, where Gordon was eagerly 
urging Ewell to give him permission to turn Grant's 
right which he had discovered to be exposed, Ewell 
had felt compelled to refuse his assent and content 
himself with withstanding most of the day Sedgwick's 
fierce assaults. On the right Wilcox and Heth had not 
even replenished their ammunition chests and cartridge 
boxes, and when Hancock with his corps, Getty's 
division of Sedgwick's corps, and Wadsworth's divis- 
ion of the Fifth Corps attacked them in the early 
morning, the two Confederate divisions, unable to 



400 ROBERT E. LEE 

make an effectual resistance, were swept back in con- 
fusion. It looked as though Lee's right wing would 
be crushed. At this critical moment Longstreet ar- 
rived on the field. Wliatever his dulness in prepara- 
tion, or his sloth on the march, on the field of battle 
all his senses were quickened. As a fighter he had 
no superior in either army. Making his dispositions 
swiftly, he promptly threw his men across the space 
where the lines had given way and where men were 
now streaming to the rear, and, with Kershaw on the 
right of the Plank Road and Field on the left, pressed 
forward to meet the advancing Federals. The change 
was instant and complete, and as the fresh troops 
struck the long line of Hancock's men, who had sup- 
posed that they had overcome all opposition, they gave 
way under the shock and were pressed back to their 
original lines of entrenchment. The presence of Lee 
himself added to the ardor of the charge that swept 
back the advancing Federal divisions and changed a 
reverse into a victory. 

The Confederate commander must have felt during 
the early hours of the contest much more anxiety than 
he displayed, for the delay of Longstreet completely 
paralyzed his plans; and now as the troops advanced 
to the attack which was to re-establish his lines, Lee 
rode forward and put himself at their head. The ef- 
fect was instantaneous. The cry arose, '^General Lee, 
to the rear!" and as the men passed to the front he 
was called to, ''Go back, General Lee; this is no place 
for you. Go back, we'll settle this." ^ And they did 

> Taylor's "Lee," p. 234. 



^ 



THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 401 

settle it. The lines of gray swept forward and Lee's 
broken line was re-established. 

An account of this episode was given afterward by 
an eye-witness, General Lee's chief of artillery. After 
speaking of posting some guns in a clearing, he con- 
tinues : 

"All night Heth, Hill, and Wilcox remained at their 
posts in the thicket, with their men really under arms 
and not only ready for a night encounter, but occa- 
sionally exchanging shots with the enemy. By those 
guns I bivouacked that night and General Lee very 
near. Early next morning (the 6th) the fight was re- 
newed by Hill with his brave division commanders and 
their sternly enduring soldiers. Before long, however, 
they sent word to General Lee — by whose srde I was 
on horseback — that they were much worn and even 
harder pressed than on the previous day, and must 
inevitably fall back if not reinforced. General Lee 
sent exhorting them to hold on and promising support; 
he also sent to hasten Longstreet to the rescue. . . . 
Not long after, our exhausted fellows came back in num- 
bers and the occasion arrived for the grape from those 
guns to stem and shatter the hastening bluecoats. It 
was at this critical moment that General Lee, deeply 
anxious for the appearance of Longstreet's column, 
greeted a score or two of gray boys who rushed double- 
quick into the little opening occupied by our guns and 
ourselves. The general called out, 'Who are you, my 
boys?' They immediately cried out, 'Texas boys.' 
The general instantly lifted his hat and waved it round, 
exclaiming, 'Hurrah for Texas! Hurrah for Texas!' 



402 R013ERT E. LEE 

By this nearly a regiment had gathered, and at word 
from the general to form, they at once did so. The 
general placed himself at their left with the shout, 
'Charge!' Many voices cried, 'General Lee, to the 
rear!' But he kept his place at the left, square up 
with the line, repeating with his thrilling tone, 'Charge, 
boys ! ' Then a tall gray-bearded man very near him 
stepped from the ranks and grasped the bridle of Gen- 
eral Lee's horse near the bit and said to him respect- 
fully, yet resolutely, 'General Lee, if you do not go 
back, we will not go forward.' The general yielded. 
But the gallant Texans sprang forward with a shout 
and the enemy's advance was driven back." ^ 

Lee was not now able to carry out his plan as origi- 
nally coilceived. A reconnoissance to the right disclosed 
the fact that Hancock's left might be assailed with 
promise of good success, and of being turned by a move- 
ment around his extreme left south of the Plank Road. 
With R. H. Anderson's Division, now arrived on the 
field, added to his command, Longstreet attacked Han- 
cock in front with three of his brigades (Gregg's, Ben- 
nings's, and Laws's) and sent a strong force of four 
brigades under Mahone (G. T. Anderson's, of Field's 
Division; Mahone's, of R. H. Anderson's Division; Wof- 
ford's, of Kershaw's Division, and Davis's Brigade) 
to assail and turn his flank. "The movement was a 
success, as complete as it was brilliant." The enemy 
was swept from their front on the Plank Road, where his 
advantage of position had been already felt by Lee's 
lines. The Plank Road was gained and the enemy's 
» S. P. Lee's "Life of William N. Pendleton, D.D.," p. 326. 



THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 403 

lines were bent back in much disorder. In the advance 
General Wadsworth, whose division, with that of Ste- 
venson, had been fighting Field's Brigades on the north 
of the Plank Road, was mortally wounded and fell into 
the hands of the Confederates. The advance of the 
Confederates was impeded by the fire which had caught 
in the woods and was now raging furiously; but Han- 
cock had been driven back nearly a mile to a second 
line of strong breastworks which had been erected along 
the Brock Road at right angles to the Plank Road. 

Everj^hing had gone in favor of the Confederates to 
this point, and now Lee prepared to dislodge Hancock 
by again turning his left. Longstreet, pressing his ad- 
vantage, made his dispositions to turn his flank again 
while he threw against him his victorious brigades. His 
advanced brigades were already in action when again 
the same accident occurred that had befallen on the 
fatal 2d of May a year before in almost the same place 
and manner. Longstreet, riding along the Plank Road 
with his staff and a number of other officers to direct 
the advance of his ardent troops, received a volley that 
swept across the highway from a body of his own 
men lying in the woods less than a hundred yards 
away. The gallant Jenkins was killed outright and 
Longstreet was so badly wounded that he was borne 
from the field and was incapacitated for many months. 
To those who have studied the history of war it is not 
necessary to explain the fatal effects of the loss of a 
conmiander. In all history the story of battles is full 
of the tragic consequences of such a loss, from the time 
of Antony, in the moment of victory flinging a world 



404 ROBERT E. LEE 

away by turning his back on the field and following 
Cleopatra in her flight. The consequences that follow 
the relaxation of the commander's grasp are scarcely 
less dire in modem warfare. Three times already, as 
heretofore noted, the Southern aniiies had suffered 
from this far-reaching fatality — at Shiloh, at Seven 
Pines, at Chancellorsville, and now in the Wilderness — 
when the victorious soldiery of the South were sweep- 
ing forward in the full tide of victory with an ardor 
which would have been irresistible, the mind that 
directed them as one organic whole was suddenly re- 
moved ; the carefully planned movement lost its direct- 
ing force and the power that, continuously applied, 
would have been irresistible spent itself futilely in gen- 
eral but undirected application. 

''This catastrophe of Longst reefs wound and disa- 
blement brought to a stop a movement which bade 
fair to rival Jackson's famous flanking movement at 
Chancellorsville a year before. R. H. Anderson was 
assigned to the command of the First Corps, as Stuart 
had succeeded Jackson on the earlier fleld, and Mahone 
took Anderson's Division of Hill's Corps; but the time 
consumed was precious, and the impulse which might 
have swept Hancock from his stoutly held breastworks 
was lost. Portions of the line were carried, but time 
had been given to mass sufficient troops to retake and 
hold them. On Lee's left, Gordon having at last se- 
cured consent from Ewell to attempt a turning move- 
ment after Ewell had personally reconnoitred the 
ground and verified the report of the scouts that Grant's 
right was sufficiently exposed to promise good results, 



THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 405 

moved forward with three brigades about sunset, and, 
in a gallant attack, carried Sedgwick's lines, and, roll- 
ing back his right flank, drove him from his entrenched 
position for a mile, capturing some 600 prisoners, includ- 
ing two brigadier-generals, Seymour and Shaler/ It 
was, however, too late to accomplish more; and as 
darkness fell the combat died away in the thick tangles 
of the forest, each army glad to gain the merciful respite 
of the night's rest. 

The darkness had settled down with Grant's lines 
driven back on both wings far beyond the points they 
had held in the morning, and with the Confederates 
attacking on both wings with marked success, while 
his army was decidedly shaken. Officers unsurpassed 
for gallantry found themselves in a maze of doubt as 
to what the morrow would bring forth. ''If we do not 
die to-day we shall to-morrow," wrote a little later 
one who spoke for many others. But if the stoutest 
hearted among them found cause for gloom, one heart 
had not quailed. As one of his generals rode up to 
Grant the following morning out of the confusion and 
gloom of the wretched night, he calmly called to him: 
"It is all right, Wilson; we will fight again." 

That Grant had been terribly hammered, nearly all 
soldiers are agreed; that he had not in the least wa- 
vered in his resolution, is equally apparent. 17,666 
men were his losses in these two days,^ or, by Hum- 
phreys' reckoning, 15,380 men. 

He had gotten a mauling that had cost him two men 

' W. H. Taylor's "Lee," p. 237. 
2 F. Lee's "Life of Lee," p. 322. 



406 ROBERT E. LEE 

for one that his opponent had lost, and that would have 
put any one of his predecessors on the retreat ; but he 
had not had a tremor. He had calculated that he could 
afford to lose two men if his hammering cost his an- 
tagonist one, and he would fight again. 

What might have happened if Longstreet had been 
up when Lee struck Grant while his army was toiling 
through the narrow roads of the Wilderness, expecting 
to reach open country before forming line of battle, 
must be relegated to the gloomy sphere of the "might 
have been." Lee, opening the battle of the Wilderness 
when "his opponent had three men for every one that 
he could put in his battle line, won the honors of one of 
the fiercest battles of the war and added new laurels 
to the chaplet of his imperishable renown. 

Next day the two armies lay in each other's front, 
each strengthening his position as best he might and 
expecting the other to assault. As the Union com- 
mander was the aggressor, and had more than double 
Lee's force, the latter might well await his attack. 
Toward afternoon, however, it became known that 
Grant was moving his baggage-train covered by his 
heavy lines. It was believed by some in both armies 
that he was on the retreat for the Rappahannock. Lee's 
adjutant-general and military secretary recorded in his 
notebook a query as to this new general, adding that 
any one of his predecessors would have recrossed the 
river after such a defeat. Stuart, who was always 
alert, reported to Lee in the afternoon that Grant was 
moving his wagons toward Chancellorsville.^ Lee alone 

' Ibid., p. 333. 



THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 407 

divined that in moving, Grant would head, not for the 
nortli bank of the Rappahannock, but for the north 
bank of the James. All day he spent on his lines study- 
ing his enemy's designs, and, while his staff officers 
felt assured that Grant was fixed in their front, he pene- 
trated his purpose with an infallible instinct. In wise 
anticipation of Grant's design, Stuart had already been 
sent to Spottsylvania Court House to guard the im- 
portant roads which met there; and at nightfall Lee 
detached four brigades of Longstreet's Corps, now com- 
manded in Longstreet's absence by R. H. Anderson, 
and sent them to this point, despatching with him his 
adjutant-general to apprise Stuart of the approach of 
the infantry. He was not a moment too soon. Grant 
had already formed his plan of withdrawing from Lee's 
front by night and, marching by the left flank, of seiz- 
ing the strategic point of Spottsylvania Court House; 
and that night at 9 o'clock he began his march. So 
assured, indeed, was he of the successful execution of 
his movement that next day he sent his government a 
despatch speaking of it as though it were an already 
accomplished fact. He ''stated the positions to be 
occupied by his several corps at the end of the first day's 
march, in which Warren's corps was placed at Spott- 
sylvania Court House." But as Colonel Taylor, Lee's 
adjutant-general, says in his "General Lee," "Lee dis- 
arranged this part of the programme." 

Warren, marching for the Cross Roads at Spottsyl- 
vania Court House, found himself seriously delayed in 
the darkness by the staff and head-quarters equipment 
of Meade, as well as of the commanding general, which 



408 ROBERT E. LEE 

occupied the road ahead of him; and when he arrived 
within two or three miles of his destination he found 
Sheridan's cavalry in his front, held back by Fitz Lee's 
Cavalry, posted across the Brock Road and another 
road which joined it two miles from Spottsylvania. 
The gossip of the army was, that in an interview be- 
tween Warren and Sheridan at this point were laid the 
seeds which were to bear such bitter fruit for Warren 
at the battle of Five Forks, nearly a year later. It is 
reported that Warren ordered Sheridan to get his men 
out of his way, and stated that if he could not drive the 
enemy from their front he (Warren) had men who could 
do it, a speech which offended Sheridan deeply. How- 
ever this may have been, acting in accordance with this 
idea, Warren moved his men forward in line of battle 
and drove the Confederate cavalry from the position 
which they had hitherto held, driving them across an 
open field into the woods beyond it. Warren's line 
advanced across the field in pursuit, and when within 
a few score yards of the edge of the woods, found them- 
selves unexpectedly facing Anderson's lines lying be- 
hind a fence on the edge of the woods, who suddenly 
poured into their faces a sheet of flame. Breaking 
under the shock, they were driven back across the field 
and along the Brock Road, and the lines were eventu- 
ally established near this place in a wide crescent, with 
Lee's left and right resting on the Po and the coveted 
Cross Roads of Spottsylvania Court House well covered 
in the centre. 

Humphreys pays General Fitz Lee the tribute of 
saying that he saved Spottsylvania that morning for 



THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN 409 

General Lee. This is quite true. But General Lee 
saved it for the Southern Confederacy by the masterly 
ability with which he divined and met Grant's move- 
ment. 



CHAPTER XVI 
SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE 

The lines of the two armies at Spottsylvania Court 
House were, says Humphreys, formed to hold the posi- 
tions which each one occupied at the close of the fight- 
ing on the first day, the 8th. This accounts for the 
Salient. 

About midway of Lee's line of fortifications, which 
on his left ran nearly eastward from the Po, lay a 
tract of rising ground about a half mile in width and 
from three-quarters of a mile to a mile in depth. Just 
back of it was a low bottom through which crept a 
small branch in front of a farm-house at the top of a 
gentle slope.^ This rising ground appeared to com- 
mand the ground in front of it, and in order to avoid 
the low ground and hold the elevation, the entrench- 
ments suddenly swerved north-eastward for about 
three-quarters of a mile, following the conformation 
of the ground, then turned back at an angle and ran 
south-eastward for a distance of between three and 
four miles to the Po River. This space thus enclosed 
within the out jutting entrenchments came to be known 
later, when thousands of brave men had died for its 
possession, as the ^'Bloody Salient," or the "Bloody 
Angle." More properly, however, a crook in the western 

* The McCool house. 
410 



SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE 411 

line near the apex of the Sahent was the point known as 
the Bloody Angle. At a distance of two hundred yards 
or so on either side of the Salient was woodland which 
formed a protection for any force formed to attack it. 
Jutting out as it did for such a distance beyond the 
general direction of Lee's line, it was the weak point 
in the Confederate defences, and this Lee's eye detected 
the instant he arrived on the ground and rode along 
his lines as was his wont, and a second line of defences 
was run across this Salient. The lines of the Sali- 
ent were, however, held on to. In Lee's dispositions 
Longstreet's Corps was on Lee's left, faced by the 
Fifth Corps (Warren's). Next to him came Ewell, his 
lines running north-eastward almost at right angles 
to Longstreet and embracing the Salient. At the apex 
they turned southward to join Hill, who defended Lee's 
right. Rodes's Division, of Ewell's Corps, occupied the 
west side of the Salient, with Johnson's Division next 
him holding the apex and the east side. Across the 
Salient about half way to the apex was a second line 
of entrenchment, where Gordon was placed in reserve. 

Lee had outmarched and outgeneralled Grant so far, 
and had barred his way to the coveted point whence 
the roads led to Lee's own communications with Rich- 
mond. But Grant's preponderant force made the turn- 
ing of his line always a danger to be met. 

The next day, the 9th, was spent mainly in adjusting 
the lines and constructing fortifications, and except 
for the skirmishing between the lines, which was con- 
stant, and one movement to turn Lee's left, no fight- 
ing was done. The enemy, however, sustained a severe 



412 ROBERT E. LEE '^^^ 

loss in the death of the gallant General Sedgwick, who 
in the skirmishing was shot on his lines at a fork on the 
Brock Road just after he had rallied a soldier for dodg- 
ing the bullets of the sharp-shooters and told him that 
they could not hit an elephant at that distance. The 
forces on both sides were working like beavers making 
entrenchments for the fight which all knew the morrow 
would bring. 

Only one serious movement was undertaken this day. 
An effort was made on the afternoon of the 9th to turn 
Lee's left, and for this purpose Hancock was sent around 
across the Po with several divisions; but was unable to 
make much progress and waited for daylight to carry 
out his movement. Lee, being notified, sent Early 
back to meet this threatening force, which was being 
retarded by Hampton's Cavalry, and Early, attacking 
sharply along a little stream known as Glade Run, just 
after two of the Federal divisions were withdrawn to 
aid Warren in a direct assault on Lee's left centre, 
moved forward. A stubborn resistance was offered by 
Barlow's division, which held the ridge above the Po, 
and Heth's Division, which bore the brunt of the work, 
was twice repulsed in the afternoon, but he drove the 
enemy across the river, and Lee, strengthening his 
left and entrenching behind the Po, ended the turning 
movement which threatened his communications with 
the railroad and Richmond. The next day, the 10th, 
the battle of Spottsylvania began in earnest. Warren 
and Hancock and Wright advanced in the afternoon 
about four o'clock in a gallant but futile assault against 
Lee's left; the whole line of assailants sweeping up to 



SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE 413 

the heavy abatis in front of the trenches, and some 
of the assailants actually reaching the parapet where 
Longstreet's Corps awaited them, only to be shot down 
in the furious struggle. Three hours later another as- 
sault was made along this part of the line by Hancock's 
corps; but again the assailants were swept back with 
frightful loss. 

In another part of the line farther toward the centre 
the assault was for a time more successful. At the left 
of the Salient, above the intersection of the Brock Road 
and the Louisa Court House Road, where Doles's Bri- 
gade, of Rodes's Division, lay in what came after- 
ward to be known as the "Bloody Angle," Upton's 
division, of the Sixth Corps, having formed in four lines 
behind a wood, made an assault under cover of a ter- 
rific fire from the Federal artillery, and sweeping over 
the breastworks, carried the line for several hundred 
yards, capturing a number of prisoners estimated at 
from 350 to 1,200, together with the guns of the bat- 
tery defending that angle. Had the assailants been 
promptly supported as was ordered, the fight at this 
point might have been as renowned as was that which 
occurred two days later, when Hancock again carried 
the line of the Salient and for a time put Lee's army 
in such peril that Lee felt it necessary to place him- 
self at the head of the troops sent in to recapture 
the line which had been broken. Upton, however, 
was not supported, and after a short time Gordon 
arrived from the second line, which he held as a 
reserve and, together with Battle's Brigade, Daniel's 
Brigade, and the remnant of Doles's Brigade, attacked 



414 ROBERT E. LEE 

the intruders, while Walker's Brigade attacked them 
in flank and recaptured the lost lines together with the 
guns and many prisoners. The total Federal loss on 
this day is set down by Federal authorities at something 
over 4,000 men, while the Confederate loss was about 
half that number. 

The following day, the 11th, Grant, though still 
resolute in his belief that he could destroy Lee's army 
if he were but given men enough, must have begun to 
entertain some doubt, at least, as to the ease with 
which this destruction could be accomplished. On 
the 10th he sent a despatch to Washington, saying: 
"The enemy hold our front in very strong force and 
evince a strong determination to interpose between us 
and Richmond to the last. I shall take no backward 
steps. . . . We can maintain ourselves, at least, and 
in the end beat Lee's army, I believe. Send to Belle 
Plain all the infantry you can rake and scrape. ..." 
This was far from the state of mind which declared 
that Lee's army was his objective. The next day he 
must have been in yet further doubt as to the man- 
ner of defeating his antagonist; for although his eulo- 
gists have declared that he never countermanded an 
order when once given, a statement in itself far from 
exact, on this day Burnside was first ordered to with- 
draw the Ninth Corps from the south side of the Ny; 
then was ordered to resume his position.^ Later in 
the day such evidence was given of an attempt to turn 
the Confederate left that Early was ordered by Lee to 
take possession of Shady Grove by light next morning 

■ Humphreys' "Campaign in Virginia in '64 and '65." 



SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE 415 

and hold it, a move necessary to protect the road to 
Louisa Court House, by which Lee secured his sup- 
plies. But during the night it was discovered that 
the real movement of the enemy was toward Lee's 
right, and Mahone's Division, with two brigades of 
Wilcox's Division, which had been sent with Early, 
were moved by Lee back to the right to meet this 
new movement. 

Grant had, indeed, determined to repeat on a larger 
scale the attack on the outlying Salient which had 
so nearly succeeded and so signally failed on the even- 
ing of the 10th, and for this purpose he was massing 
his troops on both sides of the Salient under cover of 
the woods which stretched about it, with a view to mak- 
ing the assault next morning at daylight. In this he 
was favored by the fact that that evening Lee had re- 
ceived information that, added to the withdrawal of 
Burnside's Corps to the north of the Ny River, tended 
to show that Grant was preparing to repeat his ma- 
noeuvre of moving by the left flank toward Richmond, 
and in consequence orders were given to withdraw the 
artillery from the Salient occupied by Johnson's Divis- 
ion, to have it available for a counter move to the right. ^ 

In truth, Lee, entrenched across Grant's selected 
path to Richmond, was very difficult to dislodge, 
though he had little more than half as many men as 
Grant had in his front. Every effort which Grant had 
made to break his lines had failed disastrously, and 
whichever way he turned he found himself balked. As 
he had wired on the 10th for all the reinforcements 

•Taylor's "Lee," p. 224. 



416 ROBERT E. LEE 

that could be raked and scraped, even for 10,000 men 
from the defences of Washington, so on the 11th he 
wired again saying: ''The arrival of reinforcements here 
will be very encouraging to the men, and I hope that 
they will be sent as fast as possible and in as great num- 
bers." It was in this despatch that he declares, "I 
propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all sum- 
mer," a declaration which he found impossible to fulfil; 
for by the time the summer was half out he was in the 
trenches south of the James, having lost in fighting it 
out on this line as many men as Lee had in his army on 
any day since the campaign opened. Indeed, in this 
despatch Grant gives an idea of the terrible cost of the 
slight advance which he had made. "We have now," 
he says, ''ended the sixth day of very heavy fighting. 
The result to this time is much in our favor, but our 
losses have been heavy, as well as those of the enemy. 
We have lost to this time eleven general officers, killed, 
wounded, and missing, and probably 20,000 men." 
Had he waited until after the next day's battle at the 
"Bloody Angle" he might have added another 7,000 
to the terrible tale, and had he waited but another 
six days, when he abandoned his efforts to destroy Lee 
at Spottsylvania, he must have given the dread score 
of killed, wounded, and missing at nearly twice 20,000 
men. Lee's loss in the fight over the "Bloody Angle" 
he might have placed at possibly 10,000 men, includ- 
ing the prisoners taken. The numbers are so stag- 
gering that the mind fails to grasp the terrible truth 
that these were men and merely deals with them as 
ciphers, as Grant did in his despatch. 



SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE 417 

All the night of the 11th Grant was massing his troops, 
behind the screen of the darkness, about the top of the 
Salient, with a view to rushing it at dawn. Hancock 
led three of his divisions to the point, and staff officers 
were sent to Burnside to spur him to prompt action. 
Wright, who had succeeded Sedgwick in command 
of the Sixth Corps, was to give aid as needed. The 
movement in front of Lee's lines was not unnoticed, 
and Johnson sent word to return his artillery; which 
drew from General Lee the remark that his generals 
were sending different accounts. Early reporting that 
the enemy were moving around his left and Johnson 
that they were massing in his front. The guns were 
ordered back, but different artillery was sent, and the 
ground being unknown, it only reached the lines in 
time to be taken. The lines, indeed, were broken at 
the moment that the guns (Page's and Cutshaw's bat- 
talions) were being wheeled in at a gallop. All but two 
of the twenty-two guns returned were captured, and 
only the two front guns got in a shot.^ As the night 
fog lifted, out of the mist came something like 40,000 
men sweeping forward, line after line, like the waves 
of the sea, enveloping the top of the Salient on all sides. 
Had Johnson's artillery been in place the result might 
have been different ; but though the infantry poured a 
steady fire in their assailants' faces, the impulse was too 
great to be resisted. They swarmed over the breast- 
works in masses; the various commands mingled to- 
gether, and inside the furious contest raged on with the 

' These were Captain William Page Carter's guns. Letters of John 
W. Daniel, Robert M. Hunter, and A. W. Garber, Richmond Times- 
Dispatch, November 26, 1905. 



418 ROBERT E. LEE 

men who held them to the last, many of whom were slain 
with the bayonet in the fierce hand-to-hand fight which 
ensued before they were overwhelmed and subdued. 
When the smoke cleared away the Federals were in 
possession of over a thousand yards of Lee's centre 
and had captured some 4,000 men, including Major- 
General Edward Johnson and Brigadier-General George 
H. Steuart, and twenty guns. It looked as though 
Lee's army were cut in two by a force fully equal to the 
destruction of both fragments. But this army was 
composed of the best fighting men of the South and 
was captained by one who, like Napoleon, left nothing 
to chance. Across the base of the Angle thus seized, 
another line of entrenchments had been thrown to 
meet precisely such an emergency, and here Gordon 
was posted in reserve. During the night he, on hearing 
that the enemy were massing to assault the line, had 
sent Pegram's Brigade to Johnson, and as soon as the 
firing began he sent R. H. Johnston forward only to be 
met by the onrush of Hancock's troops as they swept 
on down the interior of the Salient. Withdrawing Pe- 
gram's and Evans's Brigades to the cover of his reserve 
entrenchments, he reformed them and led them for- 
ward to recover the lost ground. It was at this critical 
moment, when the fate of his army appeared to hang 
in the balance, that Lee in person appeared on the scene 
and rode forward to place himself at the head of his 
men. Riding to the head of the column forming for 
the charge he took off his hat and pointed to the cap- 
tured line. The cry was instantaneous from general 
and men: "Go to the rear. General Lee!" Lee, still 



SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE 419 

determined, held his place; when Gordon appealed to 
his men. ''Is it necessary," he demanded, ''for General 
Lee to lead this charge?" "No! no!" they shouted; 
"we will drive them back if General Lee will go to the 
rear." And rushing forward they made good their 
word. Their first attack fell on Hancock's left, on the 
east side of the Salient, which they cleared after a bitter 
struggle, recapturing (for a time) some of the lost guns. 
At the same time Rodes was sending forward Daniel's 
and Ramseur's Brigades to clear the west side of the 
Salient. This also was done, though with immense 
losses, and for much of the time the enemy held the 
reverse side of the fortifications, the Confederates 
the inner side, the fight now being hand to hand; at 
other times the men firing at each other point-blank 
through the crevices of the logs which formed the for- 
tifications. General Daniel was killed; General Ram- 
seur was badly wounded. Two of Mahone's Brigades, 
Perrin's and Harris's, now came in on Ramseur's right, 
and one of Wilcox's Brigades (McGowan's) came up 
also. Perrin and McGowan both were shot soon after 
getting on the ground, the former being killed, the 
latter seriously wounded. From this time the fighting 
continued with unabated fury, and, indeed, ferocity, all 
through the day and on into the night until it ceased 
from the sheer exhaustion of the combatants. Mean- 
time, while Hancock's and Burnside's corps were con- 
tending over the bloody Salient, under Grant's orders 
one of Burnside's divisions (Potter's) had attacked 
and captured a portion of Hill's line on Lee's right, held 
by Lane's Brigade, and, with the line, two guns. Lane, 



420 ROBERT E. LEE 

however, rallied his men and, reinforced by two of 
Wilcox's Brigades, and Doles's Brigade, promptly re- 
captured the fortifications and the guns, and pressing 
back the enemy, made good his line. Then with a view 
to relieving Ewell to the westward, they pushed on, driv- 
ing Potter's troops before them, capturing a battery of 
six guns and many prisoners, until Lane found himself 
in front of a large force of the enemy advancing in two 
lines, when he retired to his lines without being able 
to bring off the gims. These advancing lines were 
Willcox's division, of Burnside's corps. Grant's plan 
was to press an advance along his whole line, and while 
the fight raged about the bloody Salient, where Sedg- 
wick's old corps, Hancock's corps, and much of Burn- 
side's corps were struggling to break through Lee's 
centre, Warren was ordered to attack Anderson's line, 
where Longstreet's men lay guarding Lee's left. Two 
assaults were made, after "Warren had opened all his 
guns," in a heavy fire on the lines, the men of the Fifth 
Corps advancing gallantly under a hail of lead and 
iron; but they were repulsed with heavy loss, and in 
a short time "a, furious fusillade" broke out between 
two Federal brigades who, by mistake, attacked each 
other in the woods. Next, Warren was ordered to 
the west face of the Salient; but at the last moment 
it was given up. Lee's line, broken in the centre by 
the sheer weight of numbers in the dim dawn, had 
been reformed and held intact throughout the long day 
against an assault whose fury and duration were un- 
known in the annals of war. The fighting is said to 
have been more continuously fierce and deadly than in 



SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE 421 

any battle of the war. For seventeen hours on a stretch 
a sleet of musketry swept the ground in front of the 
contending lines, gnawing down forest trees and eating 
away the fortifications in a leaden storm. The dead in 
the trenches had to be lifted out time and again to make 
room for the living who took their places only to follow 
them and be lifted out in turn by those who followed 
them. It is not a question of who was bravest where 
all were brave. Nearly 6,000 brave men fell that day 
on each side. It was the supreme proof of American 
constancy. On the Southern side two brigadier-gen- 
erals were killed, four were severely wounded, and one 
major-general and one brigadier-general were captured. 

When morning dawned on the 13th Lee had estab- 
lished his line across the base of the Salient and still 
presented to Grant an unbroken front resting as be- 
fore on the Po and guarding the roads to his line of 
communication. But he had lost nearly 10,000 men. 

Lee having thwarted Grant's earnest and costly at- 
tempt to break through his lines, it was determined by 
the latter to try an assault on Lee's right, and at the 
same time assault his centre again with the Second and 
Ninth Corps, Hancock's and Burnside's. Accordingly, 
Warren and Wright were on the night of the 13th moved 
across opposite to where Hill held Lee's right, to open 
the attack next morning at daybreak. Lee, however, 
had brought Mahone from his left to support Hill. 
. Again that power of divining what his opponent would 
attempt came to his aid, and when the enemy appeared 
in increased force on his right he was prepared to meet 
them. When Upton's brigade occupied a high and 



422 ROBERT E. LEE 

commanding point on the south side of the Ny, Lee had 
Mahone's Division (Wright's Brigade) in place ready to 
support his cavalry and dislodge him. Grant now tried 
approaches, and for three days gave himself up to ad- 
vancing his entrenchments and establishing batteries for 
another assault, and on the night of the 17th Hancock's 
and Wright's corps were ordered back to their old 
lines under cover of darkness in the hope that Lee's left 
and left centre, denuded to strengthen his right, might 
be carried by a coup. But there, too, Lee was ready 
for them, and though the attack was made at daylight 
as planned and was pressed for hours by three corps of 
the Army of the Potomac, aided by their pov/erful 
artillery, they were met with a fire "which completely 
swept the ground in front," and the only result of the 
assault was to swell the already appalling roster of the 
dead and wounded by over 2,000 men. 

Grant, balked in his effort to break Lee's line of 
defences, at last gave it up and planned once more to 
do that which he had once declared he never did — 
manoeuvre. Orders were issued to move by the left 
flank on the night of the 19th to the south-west; but 
Lee, again suspecting him, sent Ewell forward around 
Grant's right to demonstrate and learn his intentions, 
which was effectually accomplished, Kershaw holding 
E well's lines while the latter was feeling the enemy, 
and Ewell making such a threatening attack that Han- 
cock and Warren, who were already headed south, were 
forced to send troops back on the double-quick, and 
Grant's plan was broken up for at least that day. 

Thus ended the famous battles of the Wilderness and 



SPOTTSYLVANIA COURT HOUSE 423 

Spottsylvania Court House, with Lee's army of half 
the size of his opponent's assuming the offensive after 
two weeks of such fighting as the American continent 
had never hitherto witnessed. The latter 's losses had 
been over 32,000 killed and wounded. Lee's losses are 
not known, but were heavy enough. "The Confeder- 
ate losses," says Alexander, '^can never be accurately 
known for any of the battles from now until the close 
of the war, as few reports could be made in such active 
campaigns. Livermore's estimates give 17,250 for the 
same battles, the missing not included." ^ 
/Three facts stand forth pre-eminently during this 
deadly campaign: Lee's genius. Grant's resolution, and 
the infinite courage of the officers and men on both 
sides. 

/^ 'Alexander's "Memoirs," p. 629. 



CHAPTER XVII 
SOUTH ANNA AND SECOND COLD HARBOR 

While the death struggle was going on day after day 
in the Spottsylvania forests between Lee and Grant, a 
struggle was going on elsewhere in Virginia both to the 
north and south of the main battle-ground, yet which 
was intimately connected therewith. Sigel, whose part 
in Grant's general scheme to compass Lee's destruc- 
tion was to sweep through the valley of Virginia and 
destroy not only the source of Lee's supplies, but the 
Virginia Central Railway, his line of communication 
therewith, was approaching Staunton with a force of 
5,500 men when he was met and defeated at New- 
market, on the 15th of May, by Breckinridge with a 
force of 5,000 men. It was in this battle that the 
Cadet Corps of the Virginia Military Institute achieved 
fame by marching forward under fire as if on parade, 
dressing on their colors while shot and shell tore through 
their ranks, recalling, in their coolness and undaunted 
gallantry, the Gants Glasses at the siege of Rethel. . 

Meantime Lee had to bear the burden of the defence 
of Richmond from attack in another direction. To 
the southward, on the day following Grant's move 
toward the James, another part of Grant's plan was 
attempted, with, if possible, more signal failure. At 
City Point, where the Appomattox empties into the 

424 



SOUTH ANNA 425 

James, lay General B. F. Butler with the Army of 
the James, two army corps, the Tenth and the Eigh- 
teenth, and a division of cavalry, in all some 38,600 
officers and men, and 88 guns/ General Butler had 
been "instructed by General Grant that Richmond 
was his objective point," that he was to "move at 
the same time with the Army of the Potomac, take 
City Point and that vicinity, . . . operate on the 
south side of the James, . . . and that his army and 
the Army of the Potomac were to co-operate. . . . 
Should Lee fall back upon Richmond, the Army of the 
Potomac would unite with the Army of the James. 
... If he should be able to invest Richmond on the 
south side, so as to rest his left upon the James above 
the city, the junction of the armies would preferably 
take place there." ^ Should he learn that the Army 
of the Potomac was advancing on Richmond, he was 
to "attack vigorously"; and if he should not be able 
to carry the city, he would, at least, be able "to detain 
a considerable force of the enemy there." It was all 
very well conceived and, up to the actual execution, 
well carried out. 

Butler, under these orders to co-operate with Grant, 
had moved on Richmond by way of the James on the 
same day (May 4) that Grant moved by way of the 
Wilderness. On the 5th, the same day that Lee struck 
Grant in the Wilderness, he reached Bermuda Hundred, 
twenty miles below Richmond, under cover of an im- 
posing fleet of war vessels ; and next day he advanced 

* Humphreys' "Campaign in Virginia in '64 and '65," p. 137. 
» Ibid., p. 138. 



426 ROBERT E. LEE 

to within two miles and a half of the Richmond and 
Petersburg Railwa}-, only six miles from Petersburg 
and sixteen from Richmond. An attempt to reach 
this railway line was defeated by a South Carolina 
brigade which was opportunely halted there on its 
way to Richmond by General Pickett, who was in 
charge of the defence of Petersburg, until relieved 
by Beauregard, when he was summoned from South 
Carolina for the defence of Richmond. At this time 
Petersburg was substantially ungarrisoned. Pickett 
had there but one regiment, and to the south-east, 
along the Blackwater, a part of Clingman's Brigade of 
North Carolinians, stationed there to contest any ad- 
vance from Suffolk; so completely had the south side 
been stripped to enable Lee to hold Grant back. 

The next few days were spent by Butler in attempt- 
ing to establish his lines near Richmond and to cut 
the railways both north and south of Petersburg. The 
destruction of the bridges south of Petersburg by the 
Federal cavalry delayed the troops being brought up 
from the South by Beauregard; but those whom he 
secured proved sufficient. By the time that Butler 
made his serious attack on Petersburg, Beauregard had 
got together some 20,000 men. At this time, however, 
when Butler first appeared, Beauregard had in Peters- 
burg only Wise's Brigade, some 2,500 men, to which were 
later added Martin's Brigade and Bearing's Cavalry. 
On the 12th of May, the same day that saw the ter- 
rific battle over the "Bloody Angle" at Spottsylvania, 
Butler set out to turn Beauregard's right and to de- 
stroy him utterly. Advancing up the James he sent his 



SOUTH ANNA 427 

cavalry to destroy the two railways from Richmond to 
the South, and he himself prepared to dislodge Beau- 
regard, entrenched along a line between Drewry's Bluff 
and Petersburg, while he called on Admiral Lee, in com- 
mand of the fleet, to ascend the river and keep pace 
with his advance. An attack on the entrenchments 
was repulsed, after which Beauregard withdrew to his 
inner entrenchments. Butler now thought that every- 
thing was going favorably and planned to attack next 
day with his whole army, but for some reason deferred 
the attack till the 16th. But a better soldier than 
Butler was commanding the force opposite to him, 
inferior in numbers as it was. The defences of Rich- 
mond and Petersburg had been laid out by masters 
of the science of fortification, at whose head was one 
equally the master of the science of fortifications and 
of their defence. So long as a thousand men to the 
mile to defend them could be found they were im- 
pregnable. Thus, when Butler attacked the defences 
of Petersburg, Beauregard was not only ready to de- 
fend them, but to assume the offensive. '^ General 
Butler," says the same high Union authority on whose 
studies so much of the history of this campaign has 
been based, " could not assault Drewry's Bluff entrench- 
ments; he could not move to turn them, and he could 
not fall back to his Bermuda Hundred lines or to a new 
position on the river without abandoning his campaign 
against Richmond with the Army of the James. In 
other words, he was completely paralyzed so far as con- 
cerned offensive operations." ^ 

* IMd., p. 149. 



428 ROBERT E. LEE 

Thus, when, on the morning of the 16th, Butler 
was preparing to destroy Beauregard, Beauregard fore- 
stalled him, and, having formed his men during the 
''sma' hours" of the night, at daybreak made an attack 
with Ransom's Division and two of Hoke's Brigades on 
Butler's right that shattered not only his dream of con- 
quest, but, after a fierce contest of an hour's duration, 
carried the right of Butler's breastworks held by Heck- 
man's brigade, of General Baldy Smith's corps, cap- 
turing the brigadier, many prisoners, and five stands of 
colors. The fight along the centre and right was more 
obstinately contested; but eventually Gillmore, who 
commanded there, was forced out of his entrenchments, 
having, he says, been ordered to retire and reinforce 
General Baldy Smith, who was being driven back and 
hard pressed. A dense fog which had fallen toward 
morning and enveloped everything doubtless contrib- 
uted to the surprise of Smith's lines; but it also con- 
fused the advancing Confederates, who had to be halted 
and realigned. And the failure of Wliiting to come 
up on the right from Petersburg with his two brigades, 
as he had been ordered to do, marred Beauregard's 
plan and prevented as complete a rout of Butler's 
army as he had anticipated. Yet, it was sufficiently 
complete. It saved Petersburg, and for the rest of 
the month, Butler, who retreated that night to his 
Bermuda Hundred entrenchments, was "hemmed in" 
where he could not menace Richmond further; or, 
to use Grant's expressive phrase, was bottled up as 
tightly as if he had been corked up in a bottle. He 
had lost in the battle 3,500 men, 5 guns, and 5 



SOUTH ANNA 429 

stands of colors, while Beauregard had lost some 2,200 
men. Butler lost, beside, pretty much whatever repu- 
tation as a general he had previously retained. Grant, 
on learning of his failure to accomplish anything, 
ordered him to forward to him, by way of the James 
and the York, under General Baldy Smith, all troops 
except enough to hold his position; and on the 29th, 
Smith left by water for West Point, on the York, with 
16,000 men to join the Army of the Potomac, which 
he did in time to be one of the sufferers at Cold Har- 
bor. Butler retained some 14,000 men, but so little 
was he considered that Beauregard sent Lee, under 
the latter 's orders, more than half of his command. 

Having failed in his plan to destroy Lee's army, 
Grant now moved by the left flank nearer to Richmond, 
with the design, says Humphreys, of drawing him into 
a battle in the open country before he could occupy and 
fortify a new position; or, if this trap should fail, of 
marching on and making a successful turning movement 
and throwing his army between Lee and Richmond. 
With this in view, Hancock's corps was moved on the 
night of the 20th to Guinea Station, on the Richmond 
and Fredericksburg Railway, and thence to Bowling 
Green and Milford Station, in the direction of Richmond; 
Warren's corps was moved on the 21st in the same 
direction; Burnside's corps was to follow, taking the 
telegraph road, the most direct of the highways; and 
V/right's corps was to follow last; the whole army 
being headed for Hanover Junction, beyond the North 
Anna River, only twenty-five miles from Richmond. 
The plan was an excellent one and its execution began 



430 ROBERT E. LEE 

duly on time. That it did not come to a successful 
conclusion was due solely to Lee's generalship. Watch- 
ful as ever, the enemy had no sooner begun to move 
than Lee moved also, and though Grant had the start 
and lay nearer the North Anna, Lee outstripped him 
for the goal. Wlien the head of Grant's columns ar- 
rived in sight of the North Anna, there on the other 
side lay Lee's army across his path. 

On the first intimation that Grant was withdrawing 
from his front, Lee had moved Ewell to his right ; and 
when Burnside, marching for the North Anna, reached 
the Po, there on the south bank across the telegraph 
road lay Jackson's old corps to contest his way. It 
was not an inviting prospect, and the Ninth Corps was 
turned aside and followed Hancock's line by the more 
roundabout way by Guinea and Milford. 

Lee's transfer of his army on this occasion from 
Grant's rear to his front was one of the most skilful ma- 
noeuvres of the war. He was not one to be caught in 
the trap which had been so carefully set. He let no 
man select a -battle-ground on which to whip him. If 
adverse fate brought him there, he made the best of 
it; but no man was able to lure him to his destruc- 
tion. He had no idea of becoming enmeshed in an en- 
gagement with Grant on disadvantageous terms, and 
in this race for the North Anna, while the Army of 
the Potomac rested, the Army of Northern Virginia 
marched. Hancock was across the Mattapony at Mil- 
ford, nearly half way to the North Anna, on the morn- 
ing of the 21st, when the skirmishers of Grant's other 
corps pressed up to Lee's entrenchments at Spottsyl- 



SOUTH ANNA 431 

vania to find him still there. Wlien Hancock arrived 
at the North Anna, Lee was entrenched across his road. 
He had marched from Spottsylvania with only two 
hours' rest. All the afternoon and night of the 21st 
his army was marching parallel with Grant's army, 
resolute to gain the strong position of the South Anna. 
Warren's outposts heard the rumble of guns and trains 
all night long on the Telegraph Road ; and when Warren, 
on the 22d, reached the Telegraph Road, the rear of 
Longst reefs Corps was only four miles ahead of him. 
Lee's cavalry kept in touch with the advancing Fed- 
erals on every road throughout the entire march. 

Lee, who was with the front of E well's Corps, having, 
on the morning of the 22d, reached Hanover Junction, 
where the two railways from Richmond to Fredericks- 
burg and to Gordonsville and the south-west crossed 
each other, telegraphed his arrival to the govern- 
ment in Richmond, which was in some anxiety over 
the situation. Breckinridge, having defeated Sigel at 
Newmarket on the 15th, had been ordered to Hanover 
Junction, where he arrived on the 20th and was await- 
ing Lee with some 2,500 men; and Pickett's Division 
and Hoke's Brigade, Colonel Lewis commanding, had 
been ordered from before Petersburg to join him. As 
Anderson and Hill came up, the former that evening, 
the latter next morning, Lee made his dispositions. 
Ewell was placed on his right, resting on the south 
bank of the North Anna, commanding a crossing some 
three miles below the railway; Hill, with Pickett's 
Division, some 5,000 men which had been sent by Beau- 
regard, commanding south of Richmond, to meet Lee 



432 ROBERT E. LEE 

at Hanover Junction, was on Lee's left, extending from 
the North Anna south-westward across the Virginia 
Central Railway to Little River, near Newmarket, three 
or four miles away, the two lines forming a wide angle, 
with the blunt apex resting on the North Anna for 
nearly a mile, coimnanding the Telegraph Road and 
the Oxford Crossings, the former a half a mile or more 
above the Richmond and Fredericksburg Railway 
bridge, the latter two miles or so above it where the 
North Anna runs between high bluffs. The next after- 
noon Warren's corps crossed the North Anna at a ford 
at Jericho Mills, opposite Noel's Station, on the Virginia 
Central Railway, about five miles above the Telegraph 
Road Bridge, and was promptly attacked by Hill as 
he was deploying in line of battle and his line driven 
back on his artillery. Next morning the Sixth Corps 
followed the Fifth, which entrenched on the ground 
occupied above the river. That afternoon Hancock's 
corps reached the river by the Telegraph Road and 
after a spirited fight drove off the bridge guard posted 
on the north side of this stream. Burnside's corps 
also reached the river by the Telegraph Road, but failed 
to effect a crossing at the Oxford, as Grant had planned. 
That night Lee withdrew his advanced line and, hold- 
ing the line along the river on the bluff above Oxford, 
occupied the fortifications extending from above the 
Oxford along the bluff and then south-eastwardly 
across the railway, where he had prepared to deliver 
his attack on Grant's wings, while he held back his 
centre beyond the river at the Oxford. Burnside was 
ordered on the 24th to carry the crossing of the river 



SOUTH ANNA 433 

in his front, the Oxford; but although two divisions 
were thrown across the river higher up with a view to 
menacing the Oxford, it was found that Lee's disposi- 
tion had been too well made to be successfully chal- 
lenged. And that night Grant, having failed to make 
good his crossing, turned his back on Lee's entrench- 
ments and withdrawing his wings, already across on 
the right and left, marched down the river to a point 
twenty-odd miles below that at which Lee had offered 
battle. It is said that Grant declared that this night, 
when with his wings beyond the North Anna he found 
himself unable to connect them, was the most uneasy 
night of the war. In his report he simply says that, 
finding Lee in a position stronger than either of the 
two previous ones he had occupied, he abandoned 
his intention to attack him there and crossed the 
Pamunkey at Hanovertown below the junction of the 
confluents of the Pamunkey, and some thirty miles 
below Hanover Junction, with the design, as he stated 
to Washington, of turning Lee's position by his right. 
Lee wrote his wife from Hanover Junction on the 
23d: "General Grant, having apparently grown tired 
of forcing his passage through, began, on the night of 
the 20th, to move around our right toward Bowling 
Green, placing the Mattapony River between us. Fear- 
ing he might unite with Sheridan and make a sudden 
and rapid move upon Richmond, I determined to march 
to this point so as to be in striking distance of Rich- 
mond and be able to intercept him. The army is now 
south of the North Anna. We have the advantage of 
being nearer our supplies and less liable to have our 



434 ROBERT E. LEE 

communication trains, etc., cut by his cavalry. Still 
I begrudge every step he takes toward Richmond." 

Lee's position was, indeed, a strong one, and it was 
a soldierly instinct of a high order that had led him to 
occupy it. Burnside was the object of considerable 
animadversion for not forcing a passage at the Oxford, 
as Hancock had done at the Telegraph Road. In fact, 
Lee's position above the Oxford was impregnable and 
no force could have carried it. The fortifications along 
the bluff and across the plateau are there to-day to 
show how Lee placed his army like a wedge between 
the lines which Grant chose for his two wings. With 
these wings on one side of the river and the centre on 
the other side it was a serious position which the Army 
of the Potomac occupied from the 23d to the 26th, and 
but for one of those strange fatalities which appeared 
to visit the Southern arms. Grant's divided wings might 
have found it fatal. It happened that Lee was sud- 
denly struck down by an attack of what would now 
be probably termed ptomaine poisoning. And at the 
moment when he was about to reap the benefit of his 
masterly disposition he was prostrated in his tent and 
the opportunity passed. His adjutant-general tells 
how, as he lay in his tent, he kept murmuring in his 
feverish half-delirium, "We must strike them! we must 
strike them! They must never be allowed to pass us 
again." But the occasion was lost, and when Lee was 
able to leave his bed. Grant was crossing the Pamun- 
key, twenty-odd miles below the point where he had 
declined Lee's offer of battle. 

On the afternoon of the 28th of May the greater part 



SOUTH ANNA 435 

of Grant's army crossed the Pamunkey — at the ferries 
about Hanovertown, some thirty miles below Hanover 
Junction and seventeen miles from Richmond — and 
took position across the roads leading to the Confederate 
capital. But once more Lee placed himself across his 
path. On the evening of that day Lee's army, having 
marched twenty-four miles since morning, took posi- 
tion between Grant's army and Richmond, covering 
those roads from the Chickahominy almost to Hanover 
Court House. It was the fourth time in the great 
manoeuvres that Lee had headed Grant and forced 
him to fight for the line he had selected; and as before, 
so now, Lee had chosen his line of defence. It was 
already historic ground, for two years before, almost 
to a day, Lee had won his first victory over McClellan 
along the uplands above Beaver Dam Creek and Cold 
Harbor; and to reach Richmond Grant must pass 
across this historic field. Lee's cavalry, under Fitz 
Lee, Hampton, and Butler, had been sent to keep touch 
with the enemy should he advance directly toward 
Richmond; and on the 28th, as Sheridan moved for- 
ward along the Richmond Road in advance of Grant's 
corps to find what difficulties were in the wa}^, he came 
on the Confederate cavalry dismounted and holding 
the road near Haw's shop, eight miles or so north-east 
of Richmond. A sharp engagement ensued which 
lasted until near nightfall, when the Confederate cav- 
alry, being heavily outnumbered, fell back. But so 
fierce had been the fight that Sheridan reported them 
as having been supported by a brigade of 4,000 South 
Carolinians armed with long-range rifles. 



436 ROBERT E. LEE 

On the 26th, as he retired from before Lee on the 
South Anna, Grant, in explaining to Washington this 
retrograde movement, added that "Lee's army is really 
whipped." He was now to learn how wide this view 
was of the fact. He had manoeuvred Lee out of his 
defensive position on the South Anna only to find him 
across his path on the Chickahominy. Lee had posted 
on his right, resting on Beaver Dam Creek, Longstreet's 
Corps, which owing to Longstreet's wound was still 
commanded by Anderson; Swell's Corps (Early com- 
manding, as Ewell was ill) came next ; and on his left, 
with their front protected partly by the head branches 
of Totopotomoy Creek and the impenetrable thickets 
through which they run, were posted Hill's Corps and 
Breckinridge's command, extending westward across 
the Virginia Central Railway, a mile or so north of 
Atlee Station. Opposite Lee, at first, on Grant's right, 
were the Sixth Corps; the Second Corps (Hancock's) 
next; the Fifth Corps (Warren's), with Wilson's cav- 
alry on Grant's right wing and the rest of Sheridan's 
cavalry guarding his left wing, while Burnside's corps 
(the Ninth) was held in reserve. Grant had received 
already in reinforcements some 30,000 men, and was 
expecting some 16,000 more under General William F. 
("Baldy") Smith. These men, whom he had ordered 
from Butler's army at Bermuda Hundred on the 28th, 
when he had reason to fear that Lee had again flung 
himself across his path, were on their way to him by 
the York River route. His army numbered now — be- 
fore Smith's arrival, which took place on the 30th — not 
less than 110,000 men. Lee had received, since crossing 



SOUTH ANNA 437 

the North Anna, reinforcements composed of Breckin- 
ridge's command from South-west Virginia, 2,500 men; 
Pickett's Division of Longstreet's Corps, 5,000 men; 
and lastly, Hoke's Division, 5,000 men, which joined 
him on the night of the 28th at Cold Harbor. His 
army now numbered about 60,000 men. 

The next few days were spent in skirmishing and 
feeling the opposite force and in laying off the lines 
for the pitched battle which each commander knew 
was imminent. Grant's lines on his right extended a 
good distance beyond Lee's left, and on the 30th 
Wright's and Hancock's corps were ordered to try to 
turn Lee's left; but failed to reach the point necessary, 
owing, it is stated, to the impassable character of the 
swamps and thickets in their course. Burnside's and 
Warren's corps were pushed forward at the same time 
(Warren on the left), but came on Early entrenched 
beyond a swampy bottom and were stopped. As the 
enemy were also extending toward his right, General 
Lee now sent Early to his right to stop it and moved 
Anderson to the right to take his place, thus keeping 
steadily ahead of Grant. Early was moved over to the 
Mechanicsville Road, and, advancing beyond Grant's 
left, encountered one of Warren's brigades moving for- 
ward, and Rodes's Division, sent forward in a charge, 
drove them back to the cover of their artillery, which 
stopped the pursuit. Next day Grant threatened to 
attack all along the line; but Lee's front appeared too 
perilous, and beyond a cavalry fight at the cross-roads 
at old Cold Harbor, in which Sheridan pressed Fitz 
Lee back, the day was mainly occupied in general 



438 ROBERT E. LEE 

skirmishing and strengthening lines. Lee now moved 
Anderson further to his right beyond Early, thus ex- 
tending his lines southward to keep pace with Grant's 
manifest side-stepping toward the Chickahominy and 
Richmond. Heavy skirmishing went on every day. 

Grant, so far balked, now began to direct his atten- 
tion to securing the important point where various 
roads to Richmond and the lower James intersected, 
and for this purpose he ordered the Sixth Corps from 
his right to move by night to Cold Harbor to relieve 
Sheridan. Lee countered by moving Longstreet far- 
ther to the right, and Hoke yet farther. Lee was still 
too ill to mount his horse; but he rode along his lines 
in a little carriage, so great was the exigency of the 
situation.^ That afternoon, the 1st of May, the battle 
of "Second Cold Harbor" really began. The Sixth 
Corps, supported by the newly arrived troops under 
General Baldy Smith, made an attack along the road 
leading westward from old Cold Harbor to Richmond, 
and broke through where Hoke, on Lee's extreme right, 
extended beyond Kershaw, of Longstreet's Corps, with 
an interval between them. Happily, Hunton's Brigade, 
of Pickett's Division, was near by, and marching 
promptly to Hoke's aid, the lost ground was quickly 
recovered, while Kershaw, on Hoke's left, recovered 
the lost ground on his right and connected with Hoke 
in a new line. Humphreys places the losses in the 
Sixth and Sixteenth Corps in this encounter at 3,300 
killed and wounded. The Confederate losses were also 
heavy. 

' "Life of General William N. Pendleton," by S. P. Lee, p. 337. 



SOUTH ANNA 439 

That afternoon the force opposite Lee's right was 
ordered to be increased by Hancock's corps, which 
marched by night from its position opposite Lee's left; 
but on arrival near old Cold Harbor the troops were too 
much broken down to engage, so the assault on Lee's 
right was deferred till late in the afternoon, and then 
was again deferred until daylight of the 3d. When 
daylight came Lee was ready for this, as he had been 
for Grant's former assaults. Anticipating the enemy's 
plan to attack his right, Lee, on the 2d, met Grant's 
move by extending his line south to the Chickahominy. 
He that morning sent Breckinridge and Hill with two of 
his divisions to his right, while Fitz Lee was sent across 
the Chickahominy to picket the roads on that side 
should Grant attempt to cross to the south side. The 
armies now lay in line of battle opposite each other for 
the final struggle on "this hne," ranged as follows: On 
Lee's right, Wilcox's and Mahone's Divisions of Hill's 
Corps; then Breckinridge. Next came Longstreet's 
Corps, Kershaw with three brigades of Field's Division, 
and, on the left, Early with Heth's Division extended to 
the Shady Grove Church Road and beyond. On the 
Federal side, Hancock was now opposite Lee's right; 
next to him Wright (the Sixth Corps); then Smith 
with the Eighteenth Corps; then Warren (the Fifth 
Corps) ; and Burnside (the Ninth Corps) was in support 
of Warren. On Grant's right flank was his cavalry, 
while on Lee's left, opposite them, was his cavalry, ex- 
cept Fitz Lee's Division, which was beyond the Chick- 
ahominy. The whole line was some six miles long, 
with Grant overlapping Lee's left with his preponder- 



440 ROBERT E. LEE 

ant numbers. Both sides, officers and men alike, knew 
that the next day was to see a decisive battle, for both 
sides knew well that Grant was still resolved to fight it 
out on this line, and he was now at the end of the line. 
Officers passing among the Union troops found them 
sewing their names and addresses on their coats. Like 
the Spartans at Thermopylae, they were preparing to 
die. 

It was barely light on the 3d of June when Grant's 
left and centre, three full corps, moved from their 
breastworks and advanced against Lee's right and cen- 
tre ; Hancock, Baldy Smith, and Wright all moving in 
concert and rushing forward along a line extending 
nearly six miles from left to right. Grant had selected 
the region of Cold Harbor for his attack, because, it is 
said, he thought that if Lee attempted in his retreat to 
cross the Chickahominy he would be in a perilous posi- 
tion.^ 

He was now to discover his mistake, and at what a 
terrible cost! The attack made by his army was gal- 
lant and desperate. Beginning with Hancock's left, 
where Barlow's veteran division led the way with a 
rush which swept over Lee's first line, and extending 
to where, far to the northward, Burnside was attacking 
Early beyond the Shady Grove Church Road, it con- 
tinued until more men had been mowed down by the 
leaden sleet from Lee's steadfast lines than fell in the 
same time during the war. They were simply slaugh- 
tered along a stretch of nearly six miles. They were 
again and again sent forward only to be mercilessly 

' Humphreys' "Campaign in Virginia in '64 and '65," p. 181. 



SOUTH ANNA 441 

torn to pieces by the lines of flame which swept them 
from front and oblique till flesh and blood could stand 
no more, and the gallant Army of the Potomac quailed 
and lay still in face of the order to charge again. 
Finally Grant and Meade both saw that it was a hope- 
less task to set and gave orders to desist ; but not until, 
for the first time possibly in the history of that brave 
army, officers and men had throughout a long line failed 
to respond to an order to advance. Late in the even- 
ing, as Lee reported next day, one more attempt, ''final 
but furious," was made to carry the position where 
Breckinridge and Hoke were establishing their skir- 
mish line, but "the enemy was soon repulsed." Thus 
ended the furious battle of Second Cold Harbor; for 
though Grant attempted to reach Lee's lines later it 
was not by assaulting again, but by approaches only, 
and by the 11th he knew that this move also was hope- 
less and was planning to cross to the south side of the 
James and effect what Butler had failed to accomplish 
— the capture of Petersburg. 

Grant's account of this last battle on his chosen line 
was hardly sufficient. He dismisses in a sentence the 
bloodiest and most signal defeat he had ever suffered. 
''On the 3d of June we again assaulted the enemy's 
works in the hope of driving him from his position. In 
this attempt our loss was heavy, while that of the ene- 
my, I have reason to believe, was comparatively light." 
This was hardly an adequate historical statement of a 
battle in which over 110,000 men were totally defeated 
by an army of less than 60,000, with a loss to the former 
of over 8,000 men and to the latter of less than 1,000 



442 ROBERT E. LEE 

men. The number of casualties in the Army of North- 
ern Virginia during this period, from the 27th of May 
to the 12th of June, are nowhere stated. Humphreys 
conjecturally places the killed and wounded at between 
three and four thousand, the missing at a thousand 
more.^ The Federal losses from June 1 to June 3, 
inclusive, Humphreys gives at 12,970. McParlin, in 
''The Medical and Surgical History of the War," places 
Grant's losses, from the time he crossed the Pamunkey 
till he left Cold Harbor, at 17,129.' Whichever figure 
be correct. Grant's losses had been prodigious, and un- 
less it be conceded that this sacrifice of more than three 
men for one of his opponent's was the only method by 
which Grant could achieve his end, the future historian 
is likely to revert to the judgment of the time when 
Grant lost 60,000 men in thirty days — that it was not 
good generalship. The harsh name given it then was 
'' butchery." 

In fact. Cold Harbor was one of the most signal and 
disastrous failures in the history of the war. Even 
Humphreys, usually so open and complete, fails to con- 
vey the least idea of the absolute and disastrous de- 
feat to which Grant had led his brave army. Grant 
declared long afterward that Cold Harbor was the 
only battle of the war which he would not fight over 
again under the same circumstances. This was but a 
tardy and incomplete admission of defeat. He was de- 
feated and, with the summer but begun, he was forced 
to abandon ''this line" on which he had boasted three 
weeks before that he would fight it out if it took all 

nbid., p. 192. ^Ibid., p. 191 and note. 



SOUTH ANNA 443 

summer. Lee with but half his force had outgeneralled 
him; within one month had destroyed over 40,000 men, 
the flower of his army, and on this day, when Grant had 
declared him whipped, he added to the dread tale over 
8,000 more, and so shattered the confidence of his 
government in Grant that gold went to the highest 
point it had ever reached during the war. Instead of 
Lee's retreating across the Chickahominy, as Grant had 
planned. Grant, a little over a week later, on the 12th, 
moved secretly by night away from Lee's front, and by 
a distant and roundabout route took his army to the 
James, which he obstructed by sinking boats in the 
channel above him, and then by night on the 14th moved 
his army across the river. His move was skilfully 
executed, but, though it was inspired by a constant 
mind and an indomitable will, it was certainly not the 
act of a victor. He crossed the James with the hope 
of capturing Petersburg by a coup, only to be again 
defeated by Lee, and to be held off until he had lost 
another 60,000 men and Lee had succumbed, not to his 
generalship, as determined and resourceful as he was, 
but to the forces which undermined the power of the 
Confederate Government to furnish Lee with subsistence 
for his army. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

LEE'S STRATEGY AND THE FIRST ATTACK ON 
PETERSBURG 

Lee not only defeated Grant at Cold Harbor, but a 
little later, with Grant still before him, he did what 
Grant was vainly endeavoring to prevent. He sent 
Hampton and Fitz Lee off after Sheridan, who was 
marching on Charlottesville, expecting to meet Hunter 
there ; sent Breckinridge back to the valley of Virginia 
to intercept Hunter; and sent Early with his corps 
to cut off Hunter, who was marching down the valley, 
his course marked by the embers of burning mansions 
and the evidences of such ruthless destruction that even 
Halleck protested. It is said that at least forty of his 
officers declared that they would resign before execut- 
ing Hunter's orders. Moreover, before this, Lee him- 
self assumed the offensive, and, on both the 6th and 
7th of June, sent Early around to attempt a turning 
movement against Grant's right, which failed to attain 
any success mainly because of the impassable nature 
of the region of swamps and tangled thickets on which 
Burnside's right rested. ''The Slashes of Hanover " 
were not designed for the manoeuvring of troops. 

The detachment of Breckinridge and Early to meet 
Hunter in the valley of Virginia was forced on Lee by 
the exigency of the situation. 

444 



LEE'S STRATEGY 445 

On the defeat of Sigel at Newmarket by Breckin- 
ridge, General David Hunter, a Virginian by birth, with 
a force of some 20,000 men, after Crook and Averell 
joined him at Staunton, had been sent up the valley of 
Virginia to sweep it clean and to capture Staunton, on 
the Virginia Central Railway; Lynchburg, the junc- 
tion point of two railways from Richmond to the South- 
west; and Charlottesville, the junction point of the Vir- 
ginia Central Railway and the railway to Lynchburg 
and the South-west. Having accomplished this. Hun- 
ter was to march on down the Virginia Central Railway, 
destroying it as he advanced, and join the Army of the 
Potomac before Richmond. He had performed the 
first part of his grateful task. He had swept the valley 
clean enough to realize Grant's subsequent suggestion, 
quoted by Halleck, that crows flying over it for the 
rest of the season should be forced to carry their prov- 
ender.* He had defeated, on June 5, at Piedmont, a 
dozen miles north of Staunton, a force consisting of 
Jones's, Vaughan's, and Imboden's Brigades, the gallant 
Jones being killed in the engagement ; he had captured 
Staunton, and learning that Breckinridge with the force 
which he had defeated at Piedmont was posted at 
Waynesboro guarding the gap in the Blue Ridge on 
the road to Charlottesville, he had marched on toward 
Lynchburg through Lexington, where he had burned 
the Virginia Military Institute (the institution where 
Stonewall Jackson taught before the war), the profes- 
sors' houses, and the mansion of Governor Letcher, and 
he was now supposed to be on his victorious and blaz- 

» War Records, series I, vol, XXXVII, part 2, p. 366, 



446 ROBERT E. LEE 

ing way to Charlottesville en route to Richmond. Lee 
determined to stop this fiery progress. Accordingly 
he first sent Breckinridge back to the valley and then, 
learning that Sheridan had been sent to meet Hunter 
and aid in the destruction of the Virginia Central Rail- 
way toward Charlottesville, he, on the 8th of June, 
sent after him Hampton's and Fitz Lee's cavalry divis- 
ions; and on the 12th of June he ordered Early to 
follow Hunter and, if possible, destroy him and then 
march on Washington, as Stonewall Jackson had done 
in 1862. Thus, Lee, with Grant entrenched before 
him, had reduced his army by the 2,500 men sent with 
Breckinridge and 8,000 men sent with Early, besides 
his two cavalry divisions. It was an exhibition of 
serene confidence rarely equalled during the war. 

It must be remembered that at this time Grant still 
lay in front of Lee with an army nearly if not quite 
double Lee's; for it was not until the night of the 12th 
that Grant began to withdraw his army from the 
trenches at Cold Harbor. One is scarcely more im- 
pressed by the exigency that called for such a sacrifice 
on Lee's part or the unhesitating courage with which 
he accepted the situation. 

It should be said before leaving the matter that both 
Early and Hampton were completely successful in the 
tasks assigned them. Hampton set out after Sheridan, 
and intercepting him at Trevillian's Station, about ten 
miles from Gordonsville, fought a sharp battle with 
him, in which, though at first flanked and driven back 
with the loss of many men, he was joined by Fitz Lee, 
and next day drove Sheridan back, defeating him, with 



LEE'S STRATEGY 447 

a decidedly greater loss than he had himself suffered 
and rendering his mission completely abortive. 

Early, on his part, having reached Charlottesville, 
embarked his corps on the cars, and at Lynchburg 
defeated Hunter's plan, and pursuing him, drove him, 
with the loss of many men, into West Virginia, after 
which Early was sent by Lee down the valley to threaten 
Washington. 

On the night of the 12th of June, as darkness fell. 
Grant began to withdraw his troops from his lines at 
Cold Harbor to cross to the south side of the James, 
having on the 11th moved Warren's corps to the rear, 
to a new line of entrenchments, to cover his move. His 
crossing-place was so far down the river that the cross- 
ing was effected without the interruption which a more 
direct crossing would have provoked. It was some 
thirty miles below Lee's lines. The nearest crossing- 
point on the Chickahominy was fifteen miles below 
Cold Harbor, the most distant twenty-four miles. 
Thence he marched across to the James, to cross which 
he constructed a pontoon bridge at Windmill Point 
where it was easily protected by his fleet, having sunk 
vessels in the channel above, opposite Butler's Ber- 
muda Hundred entrenchments; and by means of this 
pontoon bridge and of ferry-boats, all his army except 
Smith's corps were transferred to the south side by 
midnight of the 16th. This corps was sent back the 
way it had come — by boat from the White House. His 
design was to effect what Butler had failed to accom- 
plish a month before: capture Petersburg by a coup 
before Beauregard could be reinforced by Lee, which 



448 ROBERT E. LEE 

he felt sure of being able to do, as it was garrisoned at 
the moment only by Wise's Brigade of less than 2,500 
men. If he had not in mind also the possibility of 
seizing Richmond by a dash up the north side of the 
James, between that river and the Chickahominy, it 
was because the last month had taught him that his 
long-tried method was hopeless, and Lee was too alert 
and able to be thus passed. Certain historians of the 
war write as though Grant's Wilderness campaign were 
a great feat of generalship and a harmonious part of a 
comprehensive plan wisely preconceived and success- 
fully executed as planned, resulting in the complete, if 
costly, destruction of Lee's army. This is far from the 
fact, and is due to a confusion of ideas, a portion of 
which had their origin in events which transpired long 
after Grant was forced to abandon the line on which 
he had proposed to fight it out if it took all summer. 
That Grant eventually compassed the destruction of 
Lee's army with the never adequately recognized aid of 
the navy no one would deny; but in this destruction 
the campaign of May, 1864, bore but a subordinate 
part. The destruction of Lee's army was mainly due 
to Grant's work after he crossed to the south side of 
the James, and to extraneous causes in which Grant's 
generalship bore a commanding part, but with which 
his Wilderness campaign had less to do than had the 
campaigns beyond the Alleghanies. Grant had sacri- 
ficed 60,000 men in a month's fighting and was only 
where he might have been without the loss of a man. 
The policy of attrition, if not created afterward, had 
not, up to this time at least, worked successfully. Lee's 



LEE'S STRATEGY 449 

army was still unshaken by his hammering, and had 
in the last battle given him the most terrible hammering 
he had ever received. So this was clearly not the way 
to capture Richmond. 

Had he attempted its capture again from the north 
side, Lee was prepared again to fling himself between 
him and Richmond on that side, as later he did on the 
south side. 

Lee knew on the morning of the 13th that Grant was 
crossing the Chickahominy, and he himself at once 
crossed to the south side, and, advancing across the 
White Oak Swamp, over which he had pursued Mc- 
Clellan, posted himself across the neck between the 
Chickahominy and the James, extending from White 
Oak Swamp to Malvern Hill, where he entrenched, cov- 
ering the roads to Richmond. In front of Hill on Lee's 
left was Warren, with whom there was sharp fighting, 
resulting in his being driven from Riddell's Shop by 
Hill, leaving many dead and prisoners behind him.^ 
In front of that portion of Lee's left where Anderson 
was posted was Wilson's Cavalry. 

Grant's plan, however, was to keep Lee occupied 
on the north side of the James, and, crossing to the 
south side, seize Petersburg by a dash before Lee could 
interpose. And for this purpose General "Baldy" 
Smith, who had arrived at City Point from the White 
House with the Eighteenth Corps on the night of the 
14th, was ordered to move at daylight next morning 
on Petersburg (the outer works guarding which were 
about six miles distant), his force being increased by a 

' Lee's despatch to Beauregard, June 17, 



450 ROBERT E. LEE 

negro division and Butler's cavalry, the whole some 
17,000 men. At the same time orders were given to 
Hancock, who crossed the James that same night (14th), 
to move on Petersburg as soon as his command re- 
ceived their rations, and, when these were delayed, 
to march without rations by the nearest route, which 
he did. The plan was well conceived and gave abun- 
dant promise of success. But the Federal generals had 
not reckoned on the ability of their opponent. 

The regular troops at this time (June 15) in the 
Petersburg trenches, besides some artillery in the re- 
doubts, were only Wise's Brigade, 2,600 men, and Bear- 
ing's Cavalry; whatever other force was there was a 
home guard. The situation appeared to Grant and 
Meade, as it appears now to every one else, to be such 
that the two corps should have walked over the defen- 
sive force with ease. But so brave was the defence 
made when Smith and Kautz attacked the Confed- 
erate lines, and so wholesome was the respect inspired 
in Grant's army by their last thirty days' experience 
of Lee's army, that the Federal officers in charge of 
the movement were made to believe that a strong 
force confronted them, and instead of assaulting at 
once, sent for reinforcements and wasted the hours in 
reconnoissances. Wlien at last, about sunset, the at- 
tack was made, the outer defences were carried and 16 
guns and 200 prisoners were captured in them. Beau- 
regard, being almost without troops, had appealed to 
Lee on the 14th for aid. Lee, however, at this time 
felt that he must protect Richmond against the peril 
of Grant's attempting to march on it on the north 



11 



LEE'S STRATEGY 451 

side of the James, where the main portion of his army 
still remained. But on the morning of the 15th, Lee 
sent Hoke's Division back to Beauregard, from whom 
he had taken it on the eve of Cold Harbor. It arrived 
that night and took position on the lines where Wise's 
Brigade was posted. Its presence was worth more than 
could have been hoped for. The news that Lee's army 
was moving to Petersburg held Smith tight in his 
captured redans, he preferring to hold what he had to 
attempting to gain more and "have the troops meet 
disaster." But the danger was still imminent. That 
night Beauregard withdrew a division (Johnson's) from 
his Bermuda Hundred entrenchments before Butler 
to strengthen his lines before Petersburg, and noti- 
fied Lee, who promptly moved Pickett's and Field's 
Divisions across the river to occupy the lines the other 
troops had left, which were then held only by Grade's 
Brigade. These divisions arrived in time to retake the 
works there from Terry, who had advanced and seized 
them in the morning. On the 17th, when the Sixth 
Corps had crossed the river, Grant sent them to hold 
these lines; but when they arrived Beauregard held 
them with Pickett and Field and Gracie, and Lee had 
again balked him. 

Much has been said of the fact that Lee did not know, 
as late as the afternoon of the 16th, that Grant's army 
had crossed to the south side of the James, and that 
even on the 17th he was not sure where Grant's army 
was. On the 15th, the Sixth Corps was still on the 
Peninsula in Lee's front, and the few roads leading up 
through the swamps and forest to the south of the Chick- 



m 



452 ROBERT E. LEE 



ill 

ahominy were strongly held by cavalry, so that to one 
who knows the country it causes less surprise that 
information was lacking. On Lee rested the respon- 
sibility of protecting Richmond, and though he tele- 
graphed Beauregard that he could not "strip the north 
bank," he sent him troops at his need, and whatever 
his mystification may have been, both Richmond and 
Petersburg were saved. 

Grant, having failed to seize Petersburg by a coup, 
was now resolved to capture it by assault. It was be- 
lieved that the force occupying it was not large, and am- 
ple means were employed, as was considered, to secure 
it. Beauregard's occupied lines extended in a curve 
before Petersburg, at first easterly, then southerly, 
some five miles. Beyond his right the defences ran 
westwardly from the Jerusalem Plank Road to the Ap- 
pomattox, about five miles ; but this stretch was wholly 
unoccupied save by cavalry pickets. Against this line, 
manned for but half its length. Grant, on the 16th, flung 
the weight of three of his army corps (the Second, the 
Ninth, and the Eighteenth), capturing four redoubts, 
and the following morning at daylight he assaulted 
again, this time adding the Fifth Corps to the others. 
Surprising the troops in the outer trenches, who were 
asleep in their exhaustion, the assailants swept over 
the first lines. But although they carried the outer 
lines, they got little farther. All day long, at one point 
or another, along Beauregard's second line, from the 
Appomattox to the Norfolk Railroad, Grant's crack 
divisions poured out their blood, only to be kept off 
or driven out if they made a momentary lodgement. 



LEE'S STRATEGY 453 

When night fell, the ground in front of the Confederate 
hnes was thick with the dead, and the defenders were 
piled high in the trenches; but Beauregard's lines were 
intact, and Lee, satisfied now that Grant could not 
attack Richmond from the Peninsula side, was hasten- 
ing to his lieutenant's aid with the rest of the Army of 
Northern Virginia. That night Beauregard withdrew 
from the trenches he had defended so well to contract 
his lines, and throwing up new entrenchments several 
hundred yards to the rear awaited the renewal of the 
storm. It broke at daylight. The Second Corps, and 
the Ninth, were thrown against Beauregard's newly 
constructed defences, while the second division of the 
Sixth Corps and a division of the Eighteenth were held 
in reserve. Meade knew that the line occupied by 
Beauregard was hastily entrenched. Moreover, he had 
learned the numbers of Beauregard's force, and the 
assault was made with confidence. But he had not 
counted on the constancy of the men in those hasty 
entrenchments. And when the assault was made Lee 
had brought up Anderson's Corps and the divisions of 
Kershaw and Field, and Hill's Corps was on the way 
pushing hot-footed for the point where Grant's gallant 
troops were being thrown against Beauregard's stead- 
fast lines only to be broken like the waves of the sea 
against the impregnable rocks. It was a repetition of 
Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor. All day long the as- 
saults came, like the billows of the advancing tide, only 
to recede again, until, as evening fell, even the iron 
Grant grew weary of attempting the impossible and 
withdrew his shattered divisions to the shelter of his 



454 ROBERT E. LEE 

fortifications. Meade had informed him that Lee's 
army had arrived, and Grant knew that his most des- 
perate assault would be in vain. His assault on Peters- 
burg in the first three days of his occupancy of the 
south side of the James had cost him over 10,500 men. 
And he had failed. That night Lee held the lines 
which substantially he held till the end, ten months 
later, when the gallant Army of Northern Virginia, 
from causes, of which Grant's persistent hammering 
was but one, had almost perished from the earth. 

Lee knew that Grant, having failed in his direct as- 
sault, would now endeavor with his superior numbers 
to extend his lines westward beyond Lee's lines, with 
the object of not only investing Petersburg on the south, 
but of reaching the railways which led from Richmond 
south and formed the lines of communication over 
which supplies and troops were brought from the 
Southern States. Also that his first move would be to 
reach the Petersburg and Weldon Railroad, which run- 
ning due south from Petersburg connected this city and 
Richmond with the Southern States and such impor- 
tant seaports as Wilmington and Savannah, the most 
essential of the ports from which blockade-running 
could still be successfully carried on. Accordingly, 
Lee was on the watch, and when, on the 21st, Grant (or 
Meade) sent the Ninth and Fifth Corps toward the 
Jerusalem Plank Road and moved the Second and 
Sixth Corps beyond their lines toward the Petersburg 
and Weldon Railway, Lee was ready for him, and as 
the Second Corps (now commanded by Birney, Han- 
cock having been disabled on the 16th) marched west- 



LEE'S STRATEGY 455 

ward beyond the Sixth Corps, A. P. Hill, who had been 
sent down the Richmond and Weldon Railway to foil 
the attempt, directed Wilcox's Division against the 
Sixth Corps, while with Mahone's and Bradley John- 
son's Divisions he fell on Birney's flank and rolled 
back his corps in the utmost confusion, capturing some 
1,700 men, 4 guns, and several colors. The attack 
was completely successful; but Lee was compelled by 
the comparative smallness of his army to withdraw 
Hill again that night to his original lines, and Grant 
was able later to extend his lines to within a mile and 
a half of the railroad. 

This unsuccessful attempt to seize the railway to the 
south was followed by an attempt to destroy it and the 
other roads southward by means of a cavalry raid. 
On the 22d of June General James H. Wilson, a gallant 
and enterprising officer, set out on a raid southward, 
crossed the Petersburg and Weldon Road, and moving 
toward Burkeville Junction, where the lines to Lynch- 
burg and Danville crossed, destroyed both railways. 
Moving south-westwardly, he was brought to a halt at 
the Staunton River — the upper reach of the Roanoke 
— where the bridge was stoutly defended by the home 
guard and where a part of W. H. F. Lee's Division of 
cavalry attacked him in the rear. Unable to cross the 
river, he was forced to abandon his raid and head for 
the main army at Petersburg by a roundabout route. 
At Stony Creek, some thirty miles from Petersburg, 
he was attacked by Hampton, and his command was 
cut in two, and at Reams's Station, on the 29th, when 
within ten miles of Petersburg, he was caught between 



45G ROBERT E. LEE 

Fitz Lee's command and Mahone's Division, which had 
been sent down the raihvay to cut him off. Here, 
nearly surrounded, he was forced to destroy his wagons 
and caissons and retreat southward again with his 
main force across the Nottaway River, while Kautz, 
making a sweep around in the other direction, gained 
the shelter of the Federal lines only after losing his 
guns. Two days later, after being in the saddle almost 
continuously, Wilson himself was able to reach shelter 
likewise, his total losses having been 1,500 men and 
12 guns. 

The commonly accepted idea of the effect of this 
campaign on Grant's reputation as a general at this 
time is one that has been taken from subsequent events 
and is utterly erroneous. The simple fact is that when 
Grant's costly failure to capture Richmond was suc- 
ceeded by his costly failure to capture Petersburg, the 
nation was utterly staggered. So much blood and 
money for nothing was something that they could not 
accept calmly. Happily for the Union cause, Mr. Lin- 
coln and his war secretary had flung everything into 
the scale for the Union, and realizing that whatever 
the cost might be they had in Grant a resolute fighter, 
they were as resolute as their general. But the country 
was not so undivided in its views, and Grant himself, 
possibly, came nearer meeting the fate of his unfor- 
tunate predecessors than is usually understood. A 
wail of anguish and of rage went up throughout the 
country. Dissensions arose among the officers of the 
Army of the Potomac, and crimination and recrimina- 
tion went on, which did not cease till long after the war. 



LEE'S STRATEGY 457 

General W. F. Smith and General Butler became in- 
volved in a quarrel, and although Grant declared that 
the latter was clearly in the wrong and, at first, asked 
that he be relieved from active command, after a mys- 
terious interview with Butler he retracted his request, 
and a short time later General "Baldy" Smith himself 
was relieved, while Butler was allowed to retain his 
active command.^ 

From this time the history of Lee a,nd his gallant 
army is the history of the siege of Petersburg, with one 
week at the end occupied in the retreat to Appomat- 
tox. It is one of the most glorious chapters in a history 
which has few parallels in the records of war either for 
valor or fortitude. For Grant was at his best in these 
months of resolute and unremitting pressure and ham- 
mering with all the men and equipment that the United 
States could furnish, and yet Lee's army held them at 
bay through ten long months and until his ranks had 
thinned to less than one thousand men to the mile 
along over thirty-five miles of lines. Lee had now to 
defend both Richmond and Petersburg, and his lines 
when completed extended from White Oak Swamp 
near its junction with the Chickahominy, eight miles 
north of the James, to Hatcher's Run, where the Clai- 
borne Road crossed it five or six miles south-west of 
Petersburg — the whole making thirty-seven miles, in- 
cluding the lines on either bank of the James at Drewry's 
and Chaffin's Bluffs. 

Had Lee been allowed to march his army southward 
and unite or co-operate with Johnson's army, which 

' Rhodes's "History of the United States," IV, p. 509, note. 



458 ROBERT E. LEE 

was retiring before Sherman, the entire field of the 
war might have been changed. Sherman would cer- 
tainly not have reached the sea, and the final issue of 
the struggle might have been different. But this plan, 
though suggested by some others, if not by Lee, could 
not be accepted by the Confederate authorities. The 
political consequences of the loss of Richmond and the 
abandonment of Virginia were too serious to be con- 
templated, and Lee was compelled by the exigencies of 
the Confederate Government to maintain the defence 
of Richmond while the forces of the Confederacy were 
destroyed in detail. 

Grant, rendered more cautious than he had been 
hitherto by the great outcry over his terrible losses, 
began now to attempt the reduction of Petersburg — 
which is but another way of saying the reduction of 
Richmond — by approaches.* 

This was precisely what McClellan had proposed to 
do two years previously; but the conditions were now 
widely different. At that time the government at 
Washington was in a panicky condition and distrusted 
McClellan as much as they feared Lee and Jackson. 
The defeat of the Union army in the valley of the Shen- 
andoah was sufficient to set them to clamoring for 
McClellan to come to their rescue — to do something 
which would relieve them from their peril. Now, how- 
ever, Washington was fully defended, and experience 
had taught them that though the glow of his camp- 
fires might light the skies above the South Mountains 
or flame on the hills of the upper Cumberland, Lee him- 

' Humphreys' "Campaign in Virginia in '64 and '65," p. 247. 



LEE'S STRATEGY 459 

self could not capture it. They had learned from their 
general the arithmetical problem that if three men at- 
tack one, though two fall in destroying him, the third 
remains, and they were putting the problem to a prac- 
tical test. The country was mourning over the dread- 
ful carnage of the Wilderness battles and their yet 
deadlier successors of Cold Harbor and Petersburg; 
but the government was firm. Its reply to the cry of 
anguish throughout the land was to call for another 
draft from its inexhaustible resources of men and 
treasure. 

Lee was under no misapprehension as to the magni- 
tude and desperateness of the struggle before him. He 
knew as well as Grant the answer to the arithmetical 
problem which the latter was working out along his 
lines in his process of exchanging two men for one on 
the field of battle; he knew as well as Grant the inev- 
itable result of the continued destruction of the rail- 
way lines which formed his lines of communication; 
he knew, as possibly no one else did, that time and 
time again his gallant army was within two days of 
starvation. Richmond was hung like a millstone about 
his neck, and he could not seek the as yet undevastated 
regions to the southward. Nor could he deal with 
Grant as he had dealt with McClellan, and, leaving a 
small force in his front, lead his army to victory against 
the defensive forces of Washington. Grant was far 
too resolute and bold for him to attempt with him the 
daring strategy that had won Second Manassas and 
recalled McClellan from the gates of Richmond, Lee 
had gone to the extreme of boldness in sending Early 



460 ROBERT E. LEE j 

off to stop the marching and burning of Hunter, while 
Grant lay within a dozen miles of Richmond, and only 
his knowledge of the staggering defeat he had inflicted 
on his bold antagonist at Cold Harbor can account for 
it. Now, in the face of Grant's next attack, he plans the 
only strategy left to him. Early had learned at Char- 
lottesville that Hunter had burnt his way through the 
valley of Virginia and was now approaching Lynch- 
burg, on the upper James. Lynchburg was his home, 
and its danger fired him to extraordinary activity. 
Putting his men on the train at Charlottesville, Early 
hastened to Lynchburg and reached there in time, on 
the 17th of June, to balk Hunter of his coveted prize 
and drive him out of Virginia into West Virginia. So 
rapid had been Early's march that he was on Hunter 
before the latter knew of his arrival, and Hunter's re- 
treat was little less than a flight. On the 18th, the day 
Lee moved the main body of his army to the south side 
of the James to confront Grant in his attempt to possess 
himself of the southern gateway of Richmond, Lee 
sent a despatch to Early at Lynchburg, informing him 
of Grant's movement on Petersburg and directing him 
to '^strike as quick as you can, and, if circumstances 
authorize, carry out the original plan." ^ This was to 
threaten Washington. 

Early, finding Hunter gone on the morning of the 
19th, pursued him into South-western Virginia, capt- 
uring, at Salem, a number of guns and caissons, and 
driving him at "headlong speed" beyond the moun- 
tains into the Kanawha Valley, putting him in such 

» S. P. Lee's "Life of WiUiam N. Pendleton," p. 360. 



LEE'S STRATEGY 461 

peril that Grant sent him a despatch to "save his army " 
as best he could. Having thus cleared the valley of 
Virginia of this menace, Early turned back to carry 
out Lee's strategy. Passing through Lexington and 
Staunton, he swept down the valley straight for Wash- 
ington, It was Jackson's old corps, or what remained 
of it, and they knew the valley of the Shenandoah as 
a fox knows his covert. But not even in Jackson's 
day, when they had earned the title of ''foot cavalry," 
had they made much better time. 

Leaving Staunton on the 28th of June, in such light- 
marching trim that even officers of rank were allowed 
to take only one extra suit of underclothing, the Second 
Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia was at Win- 
chester on the 2d of July. Here Early received instruc- 
tions from Lee "to remain in the lower valley until 
fully prepared to cross the Potomac and meanwhile to 
wreck the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the canal." ^ 
This task he accomplished by burning the bridges and 
destroying the railroad to within five miles of Harper's 
Ferry, to the heights above which Sigel had retreated 
after being driven out of Martinsburg, with the loss of 
many valuable stores. 
I This strongly fortified position — Maryland Heights — 
j commanded Harper's Ferry, and Lee's plan to relieve 
1 the pressure at Richmond did not admit of delay. So, 
after a demonstration against the place by Rodes and 
j Ramseur, Early, having crossed the river at Shepherds- 
town, after burning such stores at Harper's Ferry as he 
j had not been able to send back, moved on beyond the 

> Pond's "Shenandoah Valley in 1864," p. 47. 



462 ROBERT E. LEE 

South Mountains toward Frederick, his army passing 
on the way the scene of their former heroic struggle on 
the field of Sharpsburg. 

On the morning of the 9th he was at Frederick, and 
that afternoon he attacked and routed General Lew 
Wallace at Monocacy Junction, where the latter had 
posted himself with some 6,000 troops to protect the 
important railway bridge at that point and to cover 
the roads to Washington and Baltimore. Having 
driven Wallace, with a loss of some 2,000 men, toward 
Baltimore, Early turned toward Washington, march- 
ing with a celerity which recalled and rivalled Stone- 
wall Jackson. He encamped that night about four 
miles north of Rockville, having marched his whole 
army twenty miles that day, and a portion of it thirty 
miles. ^ By daylight next morning he was again on 
the march, pushing forward toward Washington, and 
before noon his advance guard was in sight of the dome 
of the Capitol. Three hours later he was in line of bat- 
tle before the defences of Washington. But it was 
already too late to attack with his jaded force, with 
any hope of success, the powerful defences of the na- 
tional capital manned as they were. One of his bri- 
gades (Bradley T. Johnson's) had been sent off toward 
Baltimore to try to release the prisoners confined at 
Point Lookout and to destroy the railway leading 
from the north, and Early's force before the capital 
did not exceed over 9,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, 
while the forces garrisoning Washington and its im- 
mediate vicinity consisted of some 20,000 effectives, 

* Early's report; Pond's "Shenandoah Valley in 1864," p. 67. 



LEE'S STRATEGY 463 

including 4,400 veteran reserves, who were on the 
afternoon of the 11th reinforced by two divisions of 
the Sixth Corps, under Major General Wright, sent 
from Petersburg by Grant, and by a portion of the 
Nineteenth Corps, which had just arrived from New 
Orleans. A demonstration was, indeed, made against 
the lines running west from Fort Stevens, on the 
Seventh Street Road, to Rock Creek, in which the 
Federal skirmishers were driven into their works; but 
Early, having satisfied himself that the garrison of 
Washington had been too strongly reinforced from 
Virginia for him to attack with safety, after lying in 
front of the city, at Crystal Spring, all day of the 13th 
and skirmishing sharply with Getty's division, withdrew 
that night to Darnestown, beyond Rockville, and on 
the morning of the 14th, having been rejoined by his 
foraging parties, recrossed the Potomac at White's 
Ferry. 

Many conjectures have been made as to whether 
Early could have captured Washington. A full dis- 
cussion of the question is beyond the scope of this 
volume ; but to the writer it appears now, as it appeared 
then to those most charged with the responsibility on 
either side, that had Early attempted to enter Wash- 
ington he would not only have been defeated, but 
would probably have lost his army. The conditions 
that summer were peculiar. In Eastern Virginia no 
rain fell from the 3d of June to the 23d of July; in Mary- 
land the conditions were substantially the same. When 
Early arrived in front of Washington, it was after days 
of forced marching through heat so exhausting that 



464 ROBERT E. LEE 

his men fell by the wayside by hundreds, and to have 
entered the city it would have been necessary not only 
to capture defences on which the best military science 
of the world had been lavished, manned by a force 
possibly half as large again as his own, to which were 
added, in full time to have met him, the reinforcements 
of two divisions from the Sixth Corps and of one from 
the Nineteenth, but to march on to Washington, six 
miles away, through broken country well defended by 
these forces. 

Early's own report gives his reasons for not attempt- 
ing an assault, and he is borne out by the statements of 
all who were with him. He says: ''The day [the 10th] 
was very hot and the roads exceedingly dusty, but 
we marched thirty miles. On the morning of the 11th 
we continued the march, but the day was so excessively 
hot, even at a very early hour in the morning, and the 
dust was so dense, that many of the men fell by the 
way, and it became necessary to slacken our pace. 
Nevertheless, when we reached the enemy's fortifi- 
cations, the men were completely exhausted, and not 
in a condition to make an attack. ... I determined 
to make an assault, but before it could be made it 
became apparent that the enemy had been strongly 
reinforced. . . . After consultation with my division 
commanders, I became satisfied that the assault, even 
if successful, would be attended with such great sacri- 
fice as would insure the destruction of my whole force 
before the victory could have been made available, 
and if unsuccessful would necessarily have resulted in 
the loss of the whole force." 



LEE'S STRATEGY 465 

The capture of Washington was probably never a 
part of Lee's scheme when he despatched Early from 
Lynchburg to threaten the capital of the United States. 
His plan seems to have been to repeat the strategy of 
1862, and by a menace of the national capital cause 
the raising of the siege of Richmond. The possibility 
of an attack on Washington itself probably occurred 
to Early first after the defeat of Lew Wallace at Monoc- 
acy Bridge. 

If, however, when he recrossed the Potomac, Early's 
campaign in the valley of the Shenandoah had neither 
resulted in the capture of Washington nor in the with- 
drawal of Grant from before Petersburg and Rich- 
mond, it had accomplished everj^thing else which Lee 
had planned, and had completely justified Lee's mas- 
terly strategy. It had cleared the valley of Virginia of 
Hunter's army and enabled the farmers of that fruitful 
land to reap their crops in peace ; and it had shown the 
world that the idea that Lee's army was almost annihi- 
lated was so far from being sound that it could hold the 
combined armies of Meade and Butler at bay, drive 
Hunter in headlong retreat from the valley of Virginia, 
and, sweeping across into Maryland, could roll its 
drums at the very gates of the national capital. It is 
not too much to say that it so disheartened the North 
and enheartened the South that it probably prolonged 
the contest by six months. 

It illustrated Lee's bold strategy that on the heels of 
a determined movement which Grant made on the north 
side of the James, Lee, learning that his opponent had 
detached cavalry and infantry to Washington, promptly 



46G ROBERT E. LEE 

detached on his side R. H. Anderson with infantry and 
cavalry to observe their movements/ It also illus- 
trated the desperate need of the Confederacy that he 
should have been compelled to weaken his army before 
Grant at such a time. This force, after stopping for a 
short time at Culpeper, joined Early and remained 
with him till the middle of September, when Lee, under 
Grant's persistent hammering, found it necessary to 
recall the infantry to his own aid, leaving only Fitz 
Lee's Cavalry along the Shenandoah. 

* Lee's despatch to Early, August 8. 






CHAPTER XIX 

THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG AND RICHMOND 

The remainder of the Petersburg campaign, though 
forming one of the most glorious chapters in the title 
to renown of Lee and of the Army of Northern Virginia, 
was, in the words of the President of the Confederacy, 
''too sad to be patiently considered." Locked in his 
fortifications, with Richmond hung like a millstone 
about his neck, while the South was cut off piecemeal 
from possibility of contributing to his support, and his 
gallant army, like an overused blade, was being worn 
to a shadow by the attrition of continued battling, Lee, 
faithful to his trust, and obedient to the laws, put aside 
whatever personal views he might have held and con- 
tinued to handle the situation with supreme skill. Be- 
fore that army succumbed it had added to Grant's 
casualty list from the time he crossed the James another 
sixty-odd thousand men, thus doubling the ghastly 
record of his losses. 

It is curious to note from the records of the time how 
utterly dependent the two contesting governments were 
on their commanding generals. Halleck's despatches 
to Grant from the Union War Office display an almost 
pitiful dependence on Grant. Again and again he 
writes assuring him that he ''awaits his instructions." 
On the 4th of August he notifies him that he can give 
no instruction to Hunter or Sheridan till Grant decides 

467 



468 ROBERT E. LEE 

on their commands. ''I await your orders," he adds, 
''and shall strictly carry them out, whatever they may 
be." And, indeed. Grant appears to be the one firm, 
clear-headed, practical man in all the muddle of con- 
flicting ambitions and confused orders. ''This man 
Grant grows on me," Mr. Lincoln had said a year or 
more before — "he fights." It was the one solution of 
the problem — to fight and keep on, no matter at what 
cost, till the other side should be exhausted. Grant 
recognized it and acted on it. Happily for the Union 
cause. Grant was the commanding general of all the 
armies of the Union. Unhappily for the Confederate 
cause, Lee had not been given similar power. As de- 
pendent as was the cause of the South on his genius, 
the military command was still reserved in the hands 
of the civil authorities. He could not even appoint 
his chief of staff. 

Lee's strategy in despatching Early against Washing- 
ton gave him relief for some time, and deferred for 
months the seizure of Petersburg. 

The detachment of the Sixth Corps from the Army 
of the Potomac to defend Washington forced Grant 
to withdraw his left to the Jerusalem Plank Road from 
the position formerly occupied, menacing the Peters- 
burg and Weldon Railroad. Instead, therefore, of 
Grant's cutting the railway by which Lee received sup- 
plies, Lee was now cutting the Baltimore and Ohio 
Railroad. Early's cavalry raiders were threatening the 
Cuml^erland Valley, while his main body lay just beyond 
the Potomac. Chaos reigned about Washington, and 
early in August, after suggesting Franklin, Meade, and 




Union and CbNFEt- Mi 




^{^iARouND Petersburg 



THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 469 

one or two other commanders for the somewhat dis- 
organized forces guarding the capital, Grant sent his 
young and energetic chief of cavalry, General Phihp H. 
Sheridan, to take over the command in that region. 
A discussion of the remainder of Early's campaign in 
detail is not within the proper scope of this volume. 
Sheridan's army, with the Sixth and Nineteenth 
Corps and General Crook's force, known as ''The Army 
of West Virginia," numbered, present for duty on Sep- 
tember 10, including Averell's cavalry, 48,000 troops. 
Early had at Winchester 14,000. After holding Sheridan 
in check for many weeks. Early was defeated by him at 
Winchester on September 19, and was again attacked 
and defeated at Fisher's Hill on the 22d, Sheridan .out- 
numbering him on each occasion nearly three to one. 
Being reinforced by Kershaw's Division, Cutshaw's 
Artillery, and Rosser's Cavalry, Early now assumed the 
offensive, and advanced against Sheridan, who retired 
to Cedar Creek. Here Early, on October 19, surprised 
and at first defeated his army, capturing his camp; but 
instead of pursuing his advantage, he allowed his men 
to get out of hand, and while they were looting the capt- 
ured camp, Sheridan rallied his men, and attacking in 
turn, completely defeated him, and almost destroyed 
his army. Meantime, Grant made a determined and 
threatening effort to possess himself of both Richmond 
and Petersburg by a bold and secret expedient. His 
lines on the north side of the James extended, as has 
been stated, across the Peninsula between the James 
and the Chickahominy, to within some seven or eight 
miles of Richmond, the lines on either side of the 



470 ROBERT E. LEE 

James being connected by his pontoon bridges, so sit- ( 
uated that he could readily transfer his forces from one 
side to the other as he desired with both secrecy and 
despatch. His plan now was to transfer secretly the I 
Second Corps and his cavalry to the north side of the H 
James and to make a concerted attempt to seize Rich- ' 
mond on that side at the same time that he attempted 
to break through Lee's lines before Petersburg. It 
had been suggested by General Potter, the commander ' 
of one of his Pennsylvania brigades, composed largely 
of miners, that his men could run a mine under one of 
Lee's forts and blow it up. Accordingly, in preparation 
for the assault at Petersburg, mining operations had been 
going on for a month between the lines, the objective 
point being what was known as Elliott's Salient, a point 
some two hundred yards in front of Burnsidc's corps, to 
the east of Petersburg. The mine had been discovered 
on the Southern side, and some efTort had been made at 
countermining; but this had been abandoned and en- 
trenchments had been thrown up across "the gorge of 
the Salient, at which the mine was apparently directed." 
It had even been intimated in the press that this mine 
was being run. The mine was ready on the 23d or 
24th of July, and just before exploding it, an attempt 
at an assault was made on the north side of the James, 
as stated, to compel Lee to thin his lines before Peters- 
burg. Lee was not misled by it, as has been supposed; 
but it was necessary to meet the movement.^ On the 
night of the 26tli of July Hancock's corps, supported 

> Letter of General William N. Pendleton, July 29, 1864. (S. P. 
Lee's "Life of William N. Pendleton," p. 355.) 



THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 471 

by Sheridan's cavalry, was sent secretly across the pon- 
toon bridges at Deep Bottom, twelve miles below Rich- 
mond, and turning up the river, made a determined 
attack on Lee's left. It was hoped by Grant that while 
his infantry engaged such forces as Lee might have at 
Chaffin's Bluff, his cavalry might be able to dash into 
Richmond. Lee, however, was ready for them. As 
though he had read Grant's mind, he had despatched 
Wilcox and Kershaw to the north side '' before the 
movement began," and on the 27th Heth's Division 
joined them. Thus, when the assault was made it was 
promptly repulsed, and on the night of the 29th, this 
coup having failed, Hancock and Sheridan both re- 
crossed the river to take part in the capture of Peters- 
burg, which was set for the following day. Everything 
was got ready for the assault, and it appeared to the 
Union commander as though the fall of Petersburg, as 
a result of his elaborate preparations, were a foregone 
conclusion. His movement against Lee's extreme left 
had taken from before Petersburg two of Longstreet's 
Divisions (Field's and Kershaw's), two of Hill's Divis- 
ions (tieth's and Wilcox's), and the cavalry divisions of 
the two Lees, and Lee now had left before Petersburg 
only Hoke's, Johnson's, and Mahone's Divisions — not 
a very strong force, certainly; but it served. Against 
these thin lines were massed, in the hours of darkness 
on the night of the 29th, Grant's great army. All 
arrangements were made carefully. The mine was 
charged; the fuses laid; the heavy guns and mortars 
were got in position to cover the assault and to sweep 
the open space beyond the doomed Salient, to prevent 



472 ROBERT E. LEE 

the approach of fresh defenders. The night was spent 
in massing troops for the assault and in clearing away 
the abatis to make ready for the passage and charge 
of the troops; the pioneers were marshalled with their 
axes and entrenching tools, and everything was pre- 
pared for the rush forward as soon as the explosion 
should occur. The time set for this was the first crack 
of dawn. Burnside, Warren, Ord, and Hancock were 
all in place — the major portion of their corps massed 
to rush forward and overwhelm the defenders' thin 
line. A delay occurred; the first fuse did not burn 
and it was nearly two hours before another could be 
lighted. The explosion, however, when it occurred 
was a complete success; the undermined redan was 
blown up, carrying a battery and nearly two companies 
to destruction and shocking the men in the trenches 
on either side for a considerable distance. A huge 
crater yawned in Lee's lines where one of his strongest 
forts had frowned. Promptly the assailing force poured 
out of their breastworks and rushed forward into the 
great gap opened in Lee's lines. It proved a death- 
trap. The huge yawning pit was nearly a hundred 
yards long and was sixty feet wide and twenty-five 
feet deep, and into this cul-de-sac poured the leading 
troops of Burnside, so that in a little time the troops 
were huddled together in much confusion. Other regi- 
ments being pushed forward obliqued to the right and 
left and captured a part of the lines on either side; but 
the delay had enabled the startled Confederates to 
regain their bearings, and by the time the Federals 
undertook to reach the crest beyond the crater the 



i 



THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 473 

Confederate batteries were sweeping the open space 
which lay before it, and two of Mahone's Brigades 
(Weiseger's and Wright's), who had been hastily sum- 
moned by Lee on learning of the explosion, were filing 
down the covered ways, ready to contest every foot 
of ground. Elliott's men, driven from the outer line 
by the shock of the explosion and the onsweep of Burn- 
side's troops, had made a stand under cover of a ravine 
and had held back the advance until succor arrived, 
and now Lee himself had reached the field with Beau- 
regard and assumed charge of the operations. As 
Wright's Brigade was moving into position, Ferrero's 
division of negro troops, who had been drawn out to 
make the assault in the first instance, but had been set 
aside for another division of Bu-rnside's, were forced 
forward from the first line of captured entrenchments, 
where they had sheltered themselves from the terrible 
fire that was now sweeping the open space, and were 
ordered to carry the crest beyond. Pushed forward, 
they passed through the troops lying down to shield 
themselves and advanced up the slope. The presence 
of negro troops always infuriated the Southerners and 
redoubled their determination. So now the knowledge 
that negro troops were being used in the assault spurred 
every gray-clad soldier to put forth his utmost might. 
As Ferrero's black regiments advanced, Weiseger's and 
Elliott's men broke from their cover and dashed upon 
them in a counter charge so furious that they suddenly 
turned tail and fled for their lives to their own works 
or piled pell-mell into the crater as a place of refuge, 
sweeping away with them in their flight most, if not all, 



474 ROBERT E. LEE ^1 

of the troops about the crater. By half-past nine all 
chance of the capture of Petersburg by this coup had 
passed and the Federal generals were concerned only to 
save their men who were huddled in the crater or a sec- 
tion of the trenches to the south of that death-trap. 
Warren, who had been ordered by Grant to put his men 
in, but had reported that it would be a useless waste of 
life, as the opportunity had passed, was now ordered 
to make an attack toward Lee's right. But this, too, 
he found impracticable, a difference of opinion that was 
to cost him dear later on. Lee was now bending his 
energies to repair the break in his defences, and Ma- 
hone, after three assaults, carried the captured lines 
and drove out or captured all the troops left in the 
crater or the lines that had been broken. Among 
the captured in the crater was the gallant Brigadier- 
General William F. Bartlett, bravest of the brave, who 
was after the war to endear himself as much to his foes 
of the war time as he had previously done to his com- 
rades on his own side. 

The day ended with a loss of some 4,000 men added 
to Grant's ever-increasing list, while Lee's losses were 
less than a third of that number, mainl}^ among Elliott's 
and Mahone's gallant brigades, who had done such yeo- 
men's service. On the 1st of August Grant asked for 
an armistice to bury his dead, who lay in piles in and 
about the crater, and from five till nine on the 2d there 
was for the first time no firing along the lines about 
Petersburg, and many officers gathered from each side 
to see the effect of the strange attempt which had so 
nearly succeeded and so disastrously failed. 



THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 475 

It is said that the negro troops had been given to 
singing over their camp-fires during the weeks of prep- 
aration a sort of chant with a refrain ending, 

*' For we are mighty men of war," 

but after the catastrophe of the crater they were never 
known to sing it again. 

When Grant learned that Lee had sent away so im- 
portant a part of his army as that which Anderson had 
taken to the Shenandoah Valley, he promptly proceeded 
to take advantage of the weakening of Lee's lines. 
Thus, while Lee had been compelled to weaken his own 
forces to strengthen Early in the valley of Virginia, he 
was obliged to withstand the renewed shocks against 
his lines which this detachment of troops called forth. 
But, as before, Lee's sleepless vigilance forestalled him. 
The first attempt made was against Lee's left, on the 
north side of the James. It was substantially a repeti- 
tion of the attempt of July 26. Hancock's corps, and 
a part of the Tenth Corps, commanded by Birney, 
supported by Gregg's cavalry, were sent secretly to the 
north side of the James. On August 14 the infantry 
body embarked on boats with much ostentation, as if 
intended for Washington. Disembarking a little lower 
down the river on the north bank, they were marched 
up the James and a sudden attack was made on Lee's 
lines in the expectation of surprising them. The plan 
was that, while Gregg's cavalry should turn the left 
flank, the infantry was to assault and capture the lines, 
including Chaffin's Bluff, one of the chief defences of 
Richmond. Field and Wilcox, however, were on guard, 



476 ROBERT E. LEE 

the former at Deep Bottom, the latter at Chaffin's 
Bluff, and though, by reason of the thinning of the Con- 
federate right to strengthen the left against the attack 
of Barlow's divisions, Birney was able to gain a tem- 
porary advantage and seize a part of the line, captur- 
ing four guns, Lee soon had a sufficient force on the 
ground to repel the movement. Mahone's Division 
with Hampton's and W. H. F. Lee's Cavalry Divisions 
were rushed across the river from Petersburg, and when 
Hancock, Birney, and Gregg attacked, on the morning 
of the 16th, along the Darby town and Charles City 
Roads, though again they had a temporary success and 
captured between 200 and 300 prisoners and three 
stands of colors, they were ultimately repulsed with 
heavy loss and were driven back all along the line. 
For several days following this the skirmishing con- 
tinued on the north side; but on the night of the 20th, 
the attempt on Richmond having been frustrated. 
Grant withdrew his troops again to the Petersburg 
lines, having lost in this attempt on Richmond 2,786 
men.^ 

Meantime, Lee had to guard his extreme right to the 
south of Petersburg no less than his extreme left to 
the east of Richmond, thirty miles away, and here too 
he was able to repel Grant's assault. Grant's superi- 
ority in numbers gave him the power to attack both 
sides of Lee's extended lines at will. Accordingly, 
while the Second and Tenth Corps were operating di- 
rectly against ^Richmond, he and Meade were planning 
to turn Lee's right also. Hoping to cut and, possibly, 

* Humphreys' "Campaign in Virginia in '64 and '65," p. 272. 



THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 477 

to secure permanent possession of the two railway lines 
connecting Petersburg and Richmond with the Caro- 
linas and the far South, and figuring that, at least, he 
could compel Lee to recall Anderson from the Shen- 
andoah Valley and thus weaken Early, who was still 
holding Washington and Western Maryland and Penn- 
sylvania in terror, though Sheridan was now on hand 
to protect them, Grant, on the 18th of August, sent 
Warren with the Fifth Corps, and Parke with the Ninth 
Corps, or a good part of it, around Lee's right to seize 
the Petersburg and Weldon Railway within a few miles 
of Petersburg. ''In addition to the destruction of the 
road, he was to consider the movement a reconnoissance 
in force and take advantage of any weakness the enemy 
might betray/' The enemy betrayed some ''weak- 
ness," but in numbers only. Warren's corps, with three 
divisions of the Ninth Corps, was, indeed, able to strike 
the Petersburg and Weldon Railway at a point some 
three miles beyond Grant's left, having only Bearing's 
Cavalry Brigade opposed to their advance; but a few 
hours later, Heth, sent by Lee with two divisions, swept 
down on them, and though they were eventually driven 
back, Warren reported that night losses numbering 
936 men. Lee met the situation, as usual, with prompt- 
ness. Recalling Mahone's and Lee's Divisions from 
before Richmond, where Hancock still lay at Deep 
Bottom, he sent them against Warren where his right 
was stretched thin, while A. P. Hill attacked his centre 
and left. Breaking through to Warren's right, Mahone's 
Divisions rolled up Crawford's division on this wing 
until it came on his strongly posted centre, when they 



478 ROBERT E. LEE 

were driven back in turn. But Warren's losses that 
day were 2,900 men, and that night Warren fell back 
a mile or more and entrenched. Lee was under the 
necessity of preserving the railway which had thus been 
attacked, and for this purpose he began to mass his 
forces as Grant was massing his to resist him. Wilcox 
was brought over to the south side, and on the 21st two 
of Field's brigades and Butler's brigade of cavalry were 
transferred to Lee's left. A. P. Hill was sent to assault 
Warren's right; but the latter was too firmly estab- 
lished to be dislodged. That afternoon an attack was 
made on Warren's left along the railway by Mahone's 
Division; but equally without success. And Hagood's 
Brigade, having pushed gallantly forward, was almost 
surrounded and cut off. Meantime, Grant had ordered 
Hancock back from before Richmond to support Warren 
on his left, thus extended, and the space covered in 
his recent flank movement was heavily fortified from 
the Jerusalem Plank Road to the railway, a stretch of 
several miles. Lee was too dependent on this line to 
tolerate its loss if it could be prevented and he made his 
dispositions accordingly. On the evening of the 24th 
he sent A. P. Hill with his corps, a brigade of Long- 
street's Corps (Anderson's), and Lee's Cavalry around 
Warren's left to interpose between him and Hancock 
at Reams's Station, ten miles south of Petersburg. On 
the afternoon of the following day they assaulted Han- 
cock, who was posted in a fortified position extending 
along the railway with both wings refused, and after 
a spirited engagement carried the position, capturing 
" 12 stands of colors, 9 guns, 10 caissons, 2,150 prisoners, 



THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 479 

3,100 stands of small arms," and forcing Hancock to 
retreat under cover of night to avoid further disaster. 
Hill's own losses were reported by him to be 720 men, 
while Hancock's were 2,372. Still Lee was unable be- 
cause of the superiority of Grant's numbers to dislodge 
him from his main fortified lines, which were gradually 
stretching westward, and he found it necessary to re- 
call Anderson from the valley of the Shenandoah to 
help him withstand the resistless tide that was grad- 
ually sweeping away his resources and annihilating 
his army.^ His enforced recall left Early alone to con- 
front Sheridan's army of thrice his numbers. 

Anderson's Divisions were brought back toward the 
latter part of September, and the exigency was great; 
for Grant was steadily attempting to break through 
first on one side of the James and then on the other. 

The next serious attempt which had to be met was 
at the end of September, on the north side of the James, 
where the lines still remained denuded. Grant sent 
by night the Eighteenth Corps (now under Ord) and 
the Tenth Corps (now under Birney) to the north side 
of the James to repeat the experiment of August, while 
at the same time Meade made a demonstration against 
Lee's right. Ord was to attack and capture Chaffin's 
Bluff and the forts connected therewith, while the 
Tenth Corps was to advance by the more northerly 
roads against the left of the Confederate lines. Lee 
was, however, no more taken by surprise than before. 

' The Confederate losses in these movements are not given with any 
accuracy, but are assumed by Alexander and others to be approxi- 
mately proportioned to the Union losses according to the niunber of 
troops engaged. 



480 ROBERT E. LEE 

He promptly withdrew troops from his right to rein- 
force Ewell, who now commanded on the north side of 
the James, and though Fort Harrison was captured by 
Ord, Fort Gilmer, which lay nearer to and protected 
Chaffin's Bluff, was firmly held and the enemy was re- 
l^ulsed with heavy loss. Lee and Grant were both on 
the ground in this engagement, and the fighting, which 
was under their immediate supervision, was costly to 
both sides. On the Southern side the losses were some 
2,000 men, while on -the Union side they were reported 
at 2,272. At the same time Meade attacked Lee's 
right where Hill commanded, Beauregard having gone 
south to meet the exigencies there. With the design 
of capturing the entrenchments along the Boydton 
Road and the South-side Railroad, General Parke and 
General Warren were, on the 30th, thrown against these 
lines and captured a portion of the outer entrench- 
ments; but in the end they were repulsed with losses 
stated at over 2,000 men, and were content to extend 
their own entrenchments farther to the westward. 

Still the Federal losses, though staggering, were stead- 
ily made up by the ever-renewed reinforcements. The 
bounties for enlistment in the North — county. State, 
and Federal — amounted now to so large a sum — over 
$1,500 in some States — that a new profession was 
created: that of the ''bounty-jumper," and while this 
class of soldier was ever ready to desert if occasion pre- 
sented itself, he made ''food for powder," and filled in 
the gaps between the brave and the patriotic. The 
contingent of mercenaries grew ever larger and larger, 
and Northern historians state as one of the reasons of 



THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 481 

Grant's continued failure to break through Lee's lines — 
the loss of the flower of his army on so many fatal 
fields. Hancock attributed his defeat at Reams's Sta- 
tion on the 25th of August mainly to his "heavy losses 
during the campaign, especially officers/' and says that 
''there were several regiments largely made up of re- 
cruits and substitutes. One, General Hancock men- 
tions particularly, as being entirely new, and some of 
its officers unable to speak English." * 

The remainder of the siege of Petersburg was like 
the beginning, save that Lee's lines steadily grew thin- 
ner under the wasting of battle and famine and sick- 
ness, while his opponent's lines as steadily refilled. 
Confident of being able to replenish his ranks, Grant's 
tactics were a repetition of those of the autumn — to 
attack now one wing and now the other of Lee's ex- 
tended lines, in the assurance that in time they would 
be worn thin enough to break somewhere. This he 
was enabled to do with his preponderant numbers, 
and his line across the James, by leaving enough men 
on one side of the James to hold one wing and march- 
ing a large force under cover of night to the other side 
to attack the other wing. Lee's part was to hold his 
lines in obedience to orders, and, if possible, break 
through Grant's line if an opening were presented. 

Thus, on the 6th of October, Hoke and Field were 
withdrawn from before Petersburg and sent to the 
Richmond side to recover the entrenchments across 
the Darbytown Road lost in the engagement of Septem- 
ber 29. This they accomplished, flanking and driv- 

* Humphreys' "Virginia Campaign of '64 and '65," p. 283, 



482 ROBERT E. LEE 

ing Kautz therefrom across White Oak Swamp, with 
a loss of over 300 men and 8 of his guns. 

On the 13th of October an assault made on Lee's 
left before Richmond by the Tenth Corps of Grant's 
army was repulsed without great loss on either side. 
And for some ten days there was an intermission of the 
assaults, though the daily skirmishing went on as before, 
varied by the nightly bombardment from the mortars 
and siege g-uns. 

A fortnight later Lee had to meet a yet more deter- 
mined attempt to cut him off from the south and, if 
possible, turn his right. Grant undertook to attack 
both of Lee's wings at the same time, the serious 
effort being made against Lee's right with three army 
corps, while Butler attacked Lee's left, in front of 
Richmond. With this in view, on October 27, Meade, 
in pursuance of Grant's orders, attempted to move 
westward across Lee's right and seize the South-side 
Railroad. He was to leave enough men in front of 
Lee's centre to hold their lines and with three corps 
— some forty-odd thousand men — make the flank move- 
ment. Parke, with the Ninth Corps (Burnside's old 
comjnand), was to move next Lee's lines, surprise his 
incomplete entrenchments on his right, and contain 
him until Hancock and Warren should have marched 
beyond Lee's right and seized the South-side Rail- 
road, when Parke was to attack in unison with the 
other two corps. It was a formidable movement, and 
under Meade's careful hand it started like clockwork. 
But Lee was ready, as ever. When Parke and Warren 
reached the ground where they were to surprise Lee's 



THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 483 

unfinished entrenchments, they found them not only 
sufficiently completed, but sufficiently manned to with- 
stand the assault, and Grant and Meade having both 
come on the field, Warren was sent westward to support 
Hancock, who was pushing forward beyond Hatcher's 
Run toward Lee's extreme right. But so difficult was 
the ground, so dense the undergrowth, and so cleverly 
were Lee's defences constructed, that it took four hours 
for the advancing troops to move a mile and a half, and 
it was four o'clock in the afternoon before Warren's 
advance brigades could be abreast of Hancock, who had 
halted at the Boydton Plank Road to await his aid. 
Meantime, while Wilcox alone was left to hold the en- 
trenchments threatened by Parke, the divisions of 
Heth and Mahone had been sent forward by Lee to 
meet this threatening advance and, with Hampton's 
Cavalry, were now, not awaiting an attack, but making 
one — Hampton on Hancock's left flank, Heth in his 
front, and Mahone moving silently by a wood-road to 
flank his right. As Egan's division of Hancock's corps 
was attempting to carry the bridge across Hatcher's 
Run, Mahone, who had passed through an interval be- 
tween Hancock's right and Warren, ''broke out of the 
woods" on Hancock's right and sweeping away Peirce's 
brigade, which had been sent to hold this part of Han- 
cock's line, pushed forward, while Hampton, on the 
other side, attacked so hotly his left flank, where lay 
Gregg's cavalry dismounted, that Hancock brought 
Egan back from the bridge to help withstand Mahone's 
furious attack. With these reinforcements Hancock 
was able to flank in turn, and Mahone was driven back 



484 ROBERT E. LEE 

into the woods with tlie loss of two stands of colors and 
several hundred prisoners. But on his side he had to 
show as spoils three stands of colors, four hundred pris- 
oners, and six pieces of artillery, which he spiked, being 
unable to get them across the stream, as the enemy held 
the bridge. Moreover, the Confederates had to their 
account the complete defeat of Grant's well-laid scheme 
to seize the South-side Railroad; for that night the 
Federals retreated under cover of darkness to their 
original positions, leaving their dead and 250 wounded 
on the field, their total loss having been over 1,400 
men. 

On the same day Butler attacked Lee's left before 
Richmond, where Longstreet, who had recovered from 
his wound of the Wilderness and returned to his com- 
mand on October 19, now had charge. With Hoke's 
and Field's Divisions, the "Local Defences," or Home 
Guard, and Gary's Cavalry, Longstreet met and re- 
pulsed the assaults made along his lines by Butler, driv- 
ing the Federals back and capturing nine colors and 
several hundred prisoners. In this attempt the Fed- 
eral loss was over 1,100 men, while the Confederate loss 
was comparatively light. Thus, the total Federal loss 
of the day in both the attacks was over 2,500 men — so 
effective even at this late stage was the depleted Army 
of Northern Virginia. This repulse appears to have 
satisfied Grant that, for the present at least, even "per- 
sistent hammering" did not give the expected results, 
and though, as transpired later, the attrition was wear- 
ing away Lee's army with deadly effect, up to this time 
it appeared mainly to have worn the Army of the Poto- 



THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 485 

mac. Thus the hammering was for the time being sus- 
pended. 

The losses of Lee's army are not known with any 
accuracy, though they were heavy enough to deplete 
the South; but the losses of Grant's army were enough 
to show what a powerful weapon Lee had wielded and 
with what masterly skill. The Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia in December, 1864, numbered some 50,000 effec- 
tives. On the 7th of November the medical director 
of the Army of the Potomac reported to General Meade 
that ''the number of wounded of the Army of the 
Potomac from M,ay 3 to October 31, 1864, may be 
considered as amounting to 57,495." ''This," says 
Humphreys, "was exclusive of the Eighteenth Corps 
while it served with the Army of the Potomac, and does 
not include the Ninth Corps at the Wilderness and 
Spottsylvania." Nor does it include the dead or the 
missing. Nearly 100,000 men had Lee's army de- 
stroyed in these six months. 

Unfortunately for Lee, the attrition went on in other 
ways continuously. Early had, as stated, been deci- 
sively defeated at Cedar Creek by Sheridan on October 
19, and his subsequent final defeat at Waynesboro sub- 
stantially destroyed his force in the valley of Virginia, 
leaving that region at the mercy of Sheridan, and ena- 
bling the Sixth Corps to be sent back to swell Grant's 
ranks before Petersburg. Sheridan swept up the valley 
to Staunton, thence to Charlottesville, and Gordons- 
ville, the object of so many futile movements. From 
there he crossed over to the James at Columbia, de- 
stroying the canal to Lynchburg, and having thus cut 
up Lee's two lines of supply, he passed on down through 



486 ROBERT E. LEE 

Goochland and Hanover and rejoined Grant on the 27th 
of March in time to take a prominent part in the final 
act of the drama which ended at Appomattox. 

Bui other causes than Grant's persistent hammering 
were now wearing away Lee's army. Cut off from 
supplies of almost every kind on nearly every side, 
grim famine and its grisly sister, disease, were slowly 
wasting what battle had spared. The condition can 
hardly be better set forth than in the statement of the 
careful and patient historian of the Virginia campaign 
of 1864-65, whose account has been mainly followed 
in this chapter. He says: ''The winter of 1864-65 
was one of unusual severity, making the picket duty 
in front of the entrenchments very severe. It was es- 
pecially so to the Confederate troops with their thread- 
bare, insufficient clothing and meagre food, chiefly 
corn bread made of the coarsest meal. Meat they had 
but little of, and their Subsistence Department was 
actually importing it from abroad. Of coffee or tea 
or sugar they had none, except in the hospitals. 

" It is stated that in a secret session of the Confederate 
Congress, the condition of the Confederacy as to sub- 
sistence was declared to be: 

'''That there was not meat enough in the Southern 
Confederacy for the armies it had in the field. 

" ' That there was not in Virginia either meat or bread 
for the armies within her limits. 

"'That the supply of bread for those armies to be 
obtained from other places depended absolutely upon 
keeping open the railroad connections with the South. 

'"That the meat must be obtained from abroad 
through a seaport. 



THE SIEGE OF PETERSBURG 487 

'''That the transportation was not adequate, from 
whatever cause, to meet the necessary demands of the 
service. 

"'That the supply of fresh meat to General Lee's 
army was precarious, and, if the army fell back from 
Richmond and Petersburg, that there was every proba- 
bility that it would cease altogether.'" 

The bald statement of these facts gives little idea 
of the condition within the Confederate lines. The 
region about the armies was absolutely denuded of 
food and the men in the trenches not only starved 
themselves, but underwent the additional pangs of 
knowing that their families were starving at home. 

These facts were as well known in the Union camp as 
in the Confederate, and Grant's objective now was far 
more the lines of supply than the lines of breastwork 
behind which Lee's ragged and shivering veterans, 
wasting away as they were, still proved too deadly to 
be inconsiderately attacked. So constant was the firing 
across the lines that no wagons could approach the 
front to bring fuel, and the ill-clad Southern soldiers 
were compelled to resort to the desperate expedient of 
burning the abatis in their front to keep from freezing. 
In consequence, when the final assaults came their lines 
had been weakened in many places, without as well as 
within the entrenchments. Numbers of them froze to 
death at their posts, and of those who remained, the 
entire body was so enfeebled as scarcely to be able to 
stand the fatigue of the retreat, and many of them 
dropped by the wayside in exhaustion. 



CHAPTER XX 
LEE AND GRANT 

Necessarily a comparison arises between the two 
captains who confronted each other in this great cam- 
paign of 1864. But the exalting of the one does not 
necessarily mean the depreciation of the other. To 
argue that Grant was not as great a soldier as Lee 
does not reflect on him. No more were Jackson or 
Johnston. Lee excelled them all. 

Grant's fame, when he was made lieutenant-general 
and came into Virginia, rested on the three great feats 
of Donelson, Vicksburg, and Missionary Ridge. And 
to these three a fourth was added a year later, when at 
Appomattox, Lee, on the 9th of April, 1865, surrendered 
to him the starving remnant of the Army of Northern 
Virginia, which the exigencies of the Confederacy had 
held before Petersburg as in a vise till it had slowly 
shrunken to a shadow. Current history has chosen to 
assign to Grant the greater praise for this last campaign, 
partly because he finally crushed Lee, but chiefly be- 
cause it ended the war. And possibly the lasting fame 
of the successful captain will be based chiefly on this. 
As a man, it should be based on this; for no victor in 
all history ever displayed nobler qualities than those 
which Grant showed when Lee asked him for terms. 
It may be well, however, to recall the simple but often 

488 



LEE AND GRANT 489 

overlooked principle, that while success is without 
doubt the gauge of a general's ability, this does not 
necessarily mean final success. History shines with the 
names of generals who have failed at last and have yet 
borne off the palm in the great contest in which Fame 
is the reward. Hannibal was not the less the superior 
of Scipio Africanus because the latter finally conquered 
him and saved Rome. Charles XII was not the less 
a greater captain than Peter's forgotten general be- 
cause the latter drove him from Russia to seek an 
asylum in Turkey. Nor was Napoleon inferior to Wel- 
lington though he died defeated and a prisoner, while 
Wellington became prime minister and first citizen of 
the England he had been so capable and fortunate as 
to save. 

A captain's rank must be measured by his opportu- 
nities and the manner in which he uses them. That 
Grant was a general of rare ability — clear-headed, capa- 
ble, far-sighted, single-minded, prompt, resourceful, 
constant, resolute even to obstinacy — no one who stud- 
ies his campaigns will deny; that he was the equal of 
Lee in that high combination of these and other rarer 
qualities which go to make up the greatest soldier, no 
one who studies with open mind the campaign of 1864 
may successfully maintain. 

The heroic manner in which Lee with his half-starved 
veterans sustained the repeated shocks of the '' per- 
sistent hammering" of Grant's great army through so 
long a period must ever be a cause of wonder to the 
true student of history, and the key will only be found 
by him who, looking beyond mere natural forces, shall 



490 ROBERT E. LEE 

consider the inspiration that, springing from love of 
country, and nourished by love of liberty, animates the 
breast of those who, firm in their conviction of right, 
fight on their own soil for their homes and their fire- 
sides. Study of the subject has, at least, convinced 
one writer, who has desired to give the truth, and noth- 
ing but the truth, that rarely if ever has there been 
such an army led by such a leader. Grant's persistent 
hammering, as attritive as it was, was far less so than 
the attrition of hunger and want. Lee, who early in 
the war had sighed for a force of veteran troops to 
whom to confide the trust, had long been at the head 
of the most experienced veterans who ever fought on 
American soil. He believed in his soul that they would 
go anywhere when properly led. But he was too clear- 
eyed a soldier not to know that the most veteran legions 
that ever followed the eagles of Rome or France or the 
flag of the Confederacy must be shod and fed or they 
could not fight. From the first there had been diffi- 
culty in the equipment of the troops, owing to the ab- 
sence of manufactories of even elementary articles. 
The arms with which the South entered the war were 
largely of the oldest and most obsolete kind ; and many 
troops were armed with old muskets roughly changed 
from fiintlocks to percussion; saddles were wanting to 
the cavalry, and swords were made on country forges.' 
Artillery had to be mounted on farm wagons,^ and 
uniforms were woven on country looms. The ordnance 
department was created, said General Johnston, out of 

> "Life of Forrest," by Dr. John A. \Vyeth. 
2 "Life of William N. Pendleton," by S. P. Lee. 



LEE AND GRANT 491 

nothing. This deficiency was in time partially over- 
come by captures from the enemy; by building up 
hastily manufacturing establishments at a number of 
points, and by blockade-running; but the matter of 
subsistence of the army was one which always caused 
grave alarm and serious and, at last, fatal trouble. 
The means of transportation were so limited that any 
break in even one line of railway was a perilous loss 
and the absence of manufactories contributed to frus- 
trate Lee's boldest designs. 

In the history of war it has ever pleased the romantic 
to find the commander sharing with his soldiers what- 
ever hardships the campaign might bring. No captain 
ever measured up to this standard more fully than Gen- 
eral Lee. The world has little conception of the scarcity 
among the Confederate soldiery of the commonest nec- 
essaries of life. They were scarce from the beginning. 
Often shirts were made from curtains, for blankets were 
substituted squares of old carpet, shoes were made of 
rawhide, and uniforms of cotton. Medicine was made 
contraband of war by the Federal Government, and 
quinine and chloroform were as rigidly excluded as 
percussion caps and powder. After the middle of the 
war, except when they were in the enemy's country 
and could secure supplies, the army rarely had enough, 
often had the least that men can subsist on; at times 
had nothing. "Shoes were scarce, blankets were curi- 
osities, and overcoats phenomena," writes a careful 
Northern student of the war.^ This was nothing new. 

"The troops of this portion of the army have for 

' "The Campaign of Chancellorsville," p. 33 (Bigelow). 



492 ROBERT E. LEE 

some time been confined to reduced rations," wrote 
Lee to the Confederate Secretary of War in 1863. 
". . . Symptoms of scurvy are appearing among 
them, and to supply the place of vegetables each regi- 
ment is directed to send a daily detail to gather 
sassafras buds, wild onion, garlic, lamb's quarters, 
and poke sprouts; but for so large an army the supply 
obtained is very small." ^ 

It is tragic to think of being dependant for the supply 
of any army on the wild vegetables that could be found 
in the March woods and fields. No more unconscious 
or more damning indictment was ever framed against 
a commissariat. He had already written to Mr. Sed- 
don ten days before on the same subject, and he now 
again is urging the necessity of a "more generous diet" 
for his men, not because of their dissatisfaction, for, 
said he, "the men are cheerful and I receive but few 
complaints, still I do not think it is enough to continue 
them in health and vigor, and I fear they will not be 
able to endure the hardships of the approaching cam- 
paign." 

In his letter of March 17, he wrote: ". . . I am in- 
formed by the chief commissary of the army that he 
has been unable to issue the sugar ration to the troops 
for the last ten days. Their ration consequently con- 
sists of one-fourth pound of bacon, eighteen ounces of 
flour, ten pounds of rice to each one hundred men about 
every third day, with some few peas and a small amount 
of dried fruit occasionally as the}^ can be obtained. 
This may give existence to the troops while idle, but 

' Letter of March 27, 1863. 



LEE AND GRANT 493 

will certainly cause them to break down when called 
upon for exertion. . . . The time has come when it is 
necessary that the men should have full rations. Their 
health is failing, scurvy and typhus fever are making 
their appearance, and it is necessary for them to have 
a more generous diet." 

It was on this fare that the army was kept who fought 
the battle of Chancellorsville, and, for that matter, 
it was on less than this that they withstood Grant's 
tremendous assaults, fought the battles of the Wilder- 
ness campaign, and held the lines before Richmond and 
Petersburg. 

But whatever the hardships of his soldiers were, Lee 
shared them. Many stories were told, by those who 
had opportunities to know, of the meagreness of his 
own table. He himself told of the hen which had 
made her home throughout the campaign in his head- 
quarters wagon and had inexplicably disappeared. 
On inquiry it turned out that some stranger had been 
invited to dinner, and his servant, ashamed to have 
the visitor see how little they had to eat at the general's 
table, had killed the hen and served her at dinner. 

Another story used to be told which, though per- 
haps not having so high authority, was generally ac- 
cepted as authentic. It is said that the general on 
one occasion, finding his meal to consist only of cabbage, 
questioned his servant on the subject, and on being in- 
formed that there was no bacon, asked what became of 
a piece of bacon which had been on the table the day 
before when they had had a guest. "That was bor- 
rered bacon, sir," said the servant. 



494 ROBERT E. LEE 

We have seen how at Sharpsburg the want of shoes 
prevented his meeting McClellan with his full force. 
Want of supplies held him in Virginia later, when 
strategy appeared to demand his again invading Mary- 
land. A few extracts from Lee's letters at the time will 
show the situation plainly. In October, 1863, after 
Gettysburg, Lee writes of his troops : "If they had been 
properly provided with clothes I would certainly have 
endeavored to have thrown them north of the Potomac; 
but thousands were barefooted; thousands with frag- 
ments of shoes, and all without coats, blankets, or warm 
clothing. I could not bear to expose them to certain 
suffering on an uncertain issue." ^ 

On October 28 he writes to his wife: ''I am glad 
you have some socks for the army. Send them to me. 
Tell the girls to send all they can. I wish they could 
make some shoes, too. We have thousands of bare- 
footed men. There is no news. General Meade, I be- 
lieve, is repairing the railroads and I presume will 
come on again. If I could only get some shoes and 
clothes for the men I would save him the trouble." 

Could anything be more tragic than this general 
bound in his trenches by the nakedness of his army, 
while his opponent prepared in his sight to over- 
whelm him! Or could anything be more pathetic 
than this general of an army acting as receiver of a 
few dozen pairs of socks knitted for his barefooted 
army by his invalid wife ! Not merely here, but from 
now on, he acts as dispenser of the socks knitted by 
her busy needles. Truly, the South may well point 

' Letter to Mrs. Lee, October 19, 1863. 



LEE AND GRANT 495 

with pride to her gifted son, who in his head-quarters 
in a "nice pine thicket" showed such antique simplicity 
of character. 

By the beginning of the year 1864, the subsistence 
of the army had become almost impossible. ^'Many 
of the infantry," writes General Lee in an official com- 
munication, '^are without shoes, and the cavalry worn 
down by the pursuit of Averell. We are now issuing 
to the troops a fourth of a pound of salt meat, and have 
only three days' supply at that rate. Two droves of 
cattle from the West that were reported to be for this 
army, I am told have been directed to Richmond. I 
can learn of no supply of meat on the road to the army, 
and fear I shall be unable to retain it in the field." ^ 

In another official letter to the commissary-general 
he writes: ''I regret very much to learn that the supply 
of beef for the army is so nearly exhausted. ... No 
beef has been issued to the cavalry corps by the chief 
commissary, that T am aware of, for eighteen months. 
During that time it has supplied itself, and has now, 
I understand, sufficient to last until the middle of 
February." ^ 

Two weeks later he writes the quartermaster-gen- 
eral as follows : ''General : The want of shoes and blank- 
ets in this army continues to cause much suffering and 
to impair its efficiency. In one regiment, I am informed, 
there are only fifty men with serviceable shoes, and a 
brigade that recently went on picket was compelled to 
leave several hundred men in camp that were unable 



' Letter to President Davis, January 2, 1864. 

^ Letter to Colonel L. B. Northrop, commissary-general, January 5, 
1864. 



496 ROBERT E. LEE 

to bear the exposure of duty, being destitute of shoes 
and blankets." ^ 

He thereupon urges that instead of trusting to the 
precarious suppHes procured by running the blockade, 
the South should spare no effort to develop her own 
resources. 

But the time had passed when the South could de- 
velop her resources, and it was soon to come when even 
the precarious supply by blockade-running was to cease 
altogether. 

On the 24th of January he wrote his wife: "... I 
have had to disperse the cavalry as much as possible 
to obtain forage for their horses, and it is that which 
causes trouble. Provisions for the men, too, are very 
scarce, and with very light diet and light clothing I 
fear they suffer. But still they are cheerful and un- 
complaining. I received a report from one division the 
other day in which it stated that over four hundred 
men were barefooted and over one thousand without 
blankets. ..." 

Such was the condition of the army in the depth of 
the winter of 1863-64, and it steadily grew worse. 
By the opening of spring Lee stood face to face with 
the gravest problem that can confront a general — the 
impossibility of subsisting his army — and, moreover, his 
own strength was waning, although he was yet to put 
forth the supreme effort which was to make his defence 
of Virginia against Grant possibly the greatest defen- 
sive campaign in history. In a letter to his eldest son, 
expressing his hearty acquiescence in an order substi- 

' Letter to Brigadier-General R. A. Lawton, quartermaster-general, 
January 18, 1864. 



LEE AND GRANT 497 

tuting a chief engineer in place of his son, for whom he 
had applied, with the design of making him chief of 
staff, he says: '^I thought that position presented less 
objections to your serving with me than any other. . . . 
I want all the aid I can get now. I feel a marked change 
in my strength since my attack last spring at Fred- 
ericksburg, and am less competent for my duty than 
ever." ^ 

All through the spring, with undimmed vision, he 
had foreseen the tragic fate awaiting him, and his letters 
show plainly how clear this vision was, yet never once 
does he show aught but the same heroic constancy 
which had distinguished him in the past. "In none of 
them," says Long, "does he show a symptom of despair 
or breathe a thought of giving up the contest. To the 
last, he remained full of resources, energetic and defiant, 
and ready to bear on his own shoulders the whole bur- 
den of the conduct of the war." ^ 

In March, when lying opposite Grant's great army 
on the Rapidan, he wrote the President of the indica- 
tion that Grant was concentrating a great force to 
operate in Virginia. And on April 6 he writes of the 
great efforts that, according to all the information he 
received, were to be made in Virginia. A week later 
he writes him again: 

Head-quarters, April 12, 1864. 

Mr. President: My anxiety on the subject of pro- 
visions for the army is so great that I cannot refrain 
from expressing it to your Excellency. I cannot see 

> Letter of April 6, 1864. ' Long's " Lee." 



498 ROBERT E. LEE 

how we can operate with our present supplies. Any 
derangement in their arrival, or disaster to the rail- 
road, would render it impossible for me to keep the 
army together, and might force a retreat into North 
Carolina. There is nothing to be had in this section 
for men or animals. We have rations for the troops 
to-day and to-morrow. . . . Every exertion should be 
made to supply the depots at Richmond and at other 
points. . . . 

I am, with great respect, your obedient servant, 

R. E. Lee, General. 

Three weeks later in a letter stating the movements 
of Grant's troops along the Rappahannock, and the 
signs of "large preparations on the part of the enemy 
and a state of readiness for action," he adds: ''If I 
could get back Pickett, Hoke, and B. R. Johnson, I 
would feel strong enough to operate. ... I cannot 
get the troops together for want of forage and am look- 
ing for grass." It was a tragic situation. Three days 
later, on the night of May 3, 1864, Grant crossed the 
Rapidan with an army of over 140,000 men, many of 
them veteran troops, as brave men as ever carried a 
musket — armed and equipped in a manner unsurpassed, 
if equalled, in the annals of war, officered by the flower 
of the North. He had also 318 guns and a wagon-train 
that, stretched in a line, would have reached to Rich- 
mond.^ He controlled, with the aid of the exceedingly 
efficient navy, the York and the Janies to Dutch Gap, 

* " The army immediately opposed to Lee numbered, when it crossed 
the Rapidan, on May 4, 1864, 149,166 men. While Lee had within 
call 62,000, but with only half that number he moved on and attacked 
Grant's army in the Wilderness." (Jones's "Life and Letters of R. E. 
Lee," p. 310.) 



LEE AND GRANT 499 

where Butler lay with an army which could spare him 
16,000 men, to help in the deadly assaults at Cold 
Harbor, and a few days later could carry the formidable 
outer defences of Petersburg. 

To meet this force, Lee had 62,000 men and 224 
guns. His army was less efficiently armed and with an 
equipment which would have been hopelessly insuffi- 
cient for any other army than the one he commanded : 
the war-worn veterans of the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia, inured to hunger and hardship and battle. 

On the 12th day of June, when Grant crossed the 
James to the south side, of the 140,000 men who had 
crossed the Rapidan one month and nine days before 
he had lost nearly 60,000, almost as many men as 
Lee had had during the campaign. On the 9th of 
April following, when Lee surrendered. Grant's losses 
had mounted up to 124,390, two men for every one 
that Lee had in his army at any time.^ By this record 
posterity must judge the two captains. It will also pay 
its tribute to the valor which could stand up against 
such losses. 

The adverse criticism of Grant is based on the charge 
that he sacrificed over 50,000 men to reach the James, 
when he might have reached the south side of James 
River and laid siege to Petersburg and Richmond with- 
out the loss of a man.^ As to whether, had he done 
this, he could have succeeded in the destruction of 

^E. P. Alexander's "Memoirs," p. 619. 

^ Grant's losses, from May 4, when he crossed the Rapidan, to June 
12, when, staggering back from Cold Harbor, he abandoned his first plan 
of attack and crossed to the south side of the James, was, according to 
the Union authorities, 54,929. (Rhodes's "History," vol. IV, p. 447; 



500 ROBERT E. LEE 

Lee's army, the impregnable defence of the Confederate 
capital, can never be known. Grant thought not, and 
he was eminently clear-headed and practical. He is 
said to have declared pithily that his objective was 
Lee's head-quarters tent. It was, moreover, neces- 
sary for him not only to defeat Lee, but at the same 
time to protect Washington, failure to do which had 
cost McClellan his place. 

No one knew so well as Lee the disastrous conse- 
quences of this policy of attrition. From August on 
his letters express plainly his recognition of the terrible 
fact that his army was wearing down without the hope 
of his losses being repaired.^ His soldierly prevision 
enabled him to predict precisel}^ what afterward oc- 
curred: the extension of Grant's lines to envelop him, 
and the consequent loss of Richmond.^ 

The design of Grant to capture Petersburg, and, by 
cutting off Richmond from the South, force the capitu- 
lation of the Confederate capital, was undoubtedly 
able strategy, and why it had not been attempted by 
him before seems even now an enigma, for McClellan 
had urged it warmly in July, 1862, and a dash had 
been made to seize Richmond from this side by a dar- 
ing raid which, possibly, had failed only because of a 
rise in the James River which prevented the raiding 
party from crossing; and the mouth of the Appomat- 



The Century Co.'s "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," vol. IV, 
p. 182.) And among these were the flower of his army, as gallant 
oflBcers and men as ever faced death on a battle-field. 

' Letter to Secretary of War, August 23, 1864. Letter to President 
Davis, September 2, 18G4. 

■' Letter of October 10, 1864. 



LEE AND GRANT 501 

tox was as securely in the possession of the Union as 
the mouth of the Delaware. 

Applause has properly been accorded Graiit for his 
skilful manoeuvre when, after Cold Harbor, he slipped 
away from Lee and crossed to the south side of the 
James without molestation. It was a capital piece of 
work, and showed the utmost ability in moving troops 
secretly in large bodies under difficult conditions. In 
truth, however, he failed absolutely in the immediate 
object of this movement: the securing, as he wrote 
Halleck, of the city of Petersburg by a coup before the 
Confederates could get there in much force. ^ 

His plan to seize Petersburg with its slender gar- 
rison of less than 2,500 men was foiled by Beauregard, 
to whom only on his urgent request Lee at length sent 
men from the north side of the James, and though 
Grant was enabled to take, on June 15, "the formid- 
able works to the north-east of the town," when he 
attacked in force on three successive days he was re- 
pulsed with the loss of 10,000 men, losses which shook 
and disheartened his army even more, possibly, than 
the slaughter at Cold Harbor.^ 

The demoralization consequent on Lee's victories 
from the Wilderness to Petersburg, over "the crippled 
Army of the Potomac," which now enabled him to de- 
tach Early and, with a view to repeating the strategy 
of 1862, send him to the valley of Virginia, followed 
by that general's signal success, in conjunction with 
Breckinridge, in clearing the valley of Sigel and Hunter, 

' Official Records, vol. XI, pp. 1, 12. 

* E. P. Alexander's "Memoirs," chajj. XXI. 



502 ROBERT E. LEE 

and, after defeating Wallace at Monocacy Bridge, 
in immediately threatening Washington itself, sent gold 
up from 168, its rate in May, to 285, the highest point 
it reached during the war/ 

The authorities in Washington, more alarmed even 
than when Lee was at Sharpsburg or at Chambersburg, 
were clamoring for Grant to come and assume personal 
command of the forces protecting the city. And it is 
alleged that Grant escaped the fate of his predecessors 
only because there was no one else to put in his place. 
It was even charged that he had fallen "back into his 
old habits of intemperance," a charge which Mr. Lincoln 
dryly dismissed with a witticism.^ 

Congress, by resolution, requested the President "to 
appoint a day for humiliation and prayer," and the 
President, "cordially concurring . . . in the pious sen- 
timents expressed" in this resolution, appointed the 
first Thursday in August as a day of national humilia- 
tion and prayer. Swinton declares that "there was at 
this time great danger of a collapse of the war." ^ 

The simple truth is that, against great outside clamor. 
Grant was sustained by the authorities in Washington 



» Rhodes's " History of the United States," IV, p. 509. Swinton, 
p. 494. 

^ " Despondency and discouragement," says Rhodes, the latest and 
among the most thoughtful of all the Northern historians of the war, 
" are words which portray the state of feeling at the North during the 
month of July, and the closer one's knowledge of affairs, the gloomier 
was his view; but the salient facts put into every one's mind the per- 
tinent question, 'Who shall revive the withered hopes that bloomed 
on the opening of Grant's campaign?"" This question he quotes from 
the New York World, a paper which he states was not unfriendly to 
Grant. ("History of the United States," IV, p. 507.) 

^ Swinton's "Army of the Potomac," p. 494. 



LEE AND GRANT 503 

because he was manifestly the best general in sight, 
and not because he had proved himself the equal of 
Lee. That he was retained is a proof of Mr. Lincoln's 
wisdom, for he was thenceforth to prove the man for 
the occasion. 

So great was the feeling of despondency at the North 
at this time that several serious, if somewhat informal, 
embassies were sent by the authorities at Washington 
to ascertain the feeling of the Confederate authorities 
touching peace on the basis of a restoration of the Union, 
coupled at first with a condition of "an abandonment 
of slavery," but later without even this condition. 

On the very day that Mr. Davis, yielding to clamor 
at the South against the Fabian policy of the cau- 
tious Johnston, who had been falling back before 
Sherman, relieved that veteran officer of his command, 
he accorded an interview to two gentlemen who had 
come on an irregular mission, with the knowledge and 
consent of Mr. Lincoln, to ask whether any measure 
could be tried that might lead to peace. Mr. Davis 
rejected the proposal to make peace, unless with it 
came the acknowledgment of the right of the South to 
self-government; "and," declares the historian above 
quoted, "taking into account the actual military situ- 
ation, a different attitude on the part of the Richmond 
government could not have been expected." ^ 

Viewed in the cold light of the inexorable facts, the 
honors at this time in Virginia were all with the Con- 
federate general, and later comparisons so invidious to 
Lee have all been made in the light of subsequent 

' Rhodes's "History of the United States," IV, pp. 514-516. 



504 ROBERT E. LEE 

events, over which neither Grant nor Lee exercised 
control. 

In truth, it was not until long afterward, and after 
it was found that the resources of the South were ex- 
hausted, that Grant's costly policy of attrition was 
accepted by the government or the people, and his star, 
which had been waning, once more ascended. That it 
ever ascended again was due in part to his constancy 
of purpose, and for the rest, to '^successes elsewhere" 
and to the exhaustion of the South, particularly to the 
destruction of the means of communication. 

While Grant was dashing his men against Lee's lines 
with such deadly consequences, Sherman, marching 
across the country, was forcing Johnston gradually 
back by manoeuvring and flanking rather than attack- 
ing in front as Grant attacked Lee. His force was 
about 100,000 men, while Johnston's army of about 
40,000, with Polk's force of 19,000, which had been 
ordered from Mississippi to join him, aggregated less 
than 60,000. At Altoona, where Johnston awaited at- 
tack in a strong defensive position, Sherman refused 
battle and moved westward to Dallas. At New Hope 
Church, on May 24, Hooker's and Howell's corps as- 
saulted Johnston's lines, but were repulsed with heavy 
loss. On the 14th of June, at Pine Knob, the assault 
was unsuccessful, but the defence cost the life of the 
gallant General Polk. 

On June 24, and again on the 27th, Johnston was 
attacked at Kennesaw Mountain, but both attacks 
were repulsed with heavy loss, and Sherman drew off 
by the flank and forced Johnston to fall back. John- 



LEE AND GRANT 505 

ston's plan was to draw Sherman farther and farther 
from his base, and then, when opportunity offered, as 
he felt sure it would in time, attack him and, if success- 
ful, destroy his army. The people of the country, how- 
ever, were wild with dismay at Sherman's continued 
advance and clamored for Johnston's removal. The 
Confederate President accordingly, after a tart corre- 
spondence with him, removed Johnston on July 17 and 
placed General Hood in command. Hood had been 
assigned to command with the understanding that 
he must fight, and fight he did, with the result of 
being defeated and driven into Atlanta, which, a little 
later on (September 1), he was forced to evacuate to 
avoid being cut off and captured. On August 23 Ad- 
miral Farragut captured Mobile. These " successes else- 
where" did much to relieve the situation at the North, 
and they were soon followed by others. Sherman hav- 
ing occupied Atlanta, Hood moved back into Tennessee 
with the idea of destroying Sherman's communications 
and recapturing Nashville, believing that this would 
compel Sherman to abandon his project and return to 
the West. Sherman, however, after following him for 
a time, sent Thomas to Nashville, and reinforcing him 
with the Fourth and Twenty-third army corps, re- 
turned himself to Atlanta and a little later marched on 
to the sea, capturing Savannah. 

Hood, with some 35,000 men, having been joined by 
the noted and able General Forrest, moved on into 
Tennessee, and on November 30 attacked Schofield 
at Franklin, and after a furious fight carried his lines 
and forced him to retire to Nashville. Following him 



506 ROBERT E. LEE 

up, Hood took position before Nashville. Here he was 
attacked by Thomas on the 15th and 16th of December, 
his lines broken and his army totally routed, losing 54 
guns. His army was, indeed, substantially destroyed. 

No step could have given more aid and comfort to 
the North, or have been more disastrous to the South, 
than the removal of Johnston at the moment when, if 
his strategy had not prepared the way for the possible 
destruction of the invading force, the veteran general 
was, at least, preparing to carry out the consistent plan 
he had laid down from the beginning. Abroad it satis- 
fied the anxious nations of Europe that the South was 
at her last gasp and established their hitherto vacillating 
policy in favor of the Union cause, and the Southern 
cause thereafter steadily declined to its end. 

The same day that the President of the Confederate 
States removed Joseph E. Johnston, the President of 
the United States, appalled at the effect of Lee's mas- 
terly defence of Richmond, issued a proclamation call- 
ing for 500,000 men, and before Grant learned of this 
call he wrote urging a draft of 300,000 immediately.^ 

Europe now changed front. The skilful diplomacy 
of Charles Francis Adams had prevented the delivery 
to the Confederacy of the arms w^hich had been built 
for her; the sympathies of the European nations had 
shifted, and the South was, as has been well said by 
the son and namesake of the able diplomat referred 
to, as securely shut up to perish as if she had been in 
a vast vacuum. The victories of diplomacy are little 
considered beside those of the battle-field. But, taking 

» Rhodes, "History of the United States," IV, pp. 506, 507. 



LEE AND GRANT 507 

into consideration what the Merrimac had accompHshed 
during her brief but formidable cruise in Hampton 
Roads, where she sank the Cumberland, captured the 
Congress's crew, and drove the famous Monitor into 
shoal water, it is probable that the blockade of the 
Southern ports might have been broken had not Mr. 
Adams's unremitting efforts availed to prevent the 
Confederate rams being delivered. 

As it was, the end was clearly in view to Lee. The 
destruction of Hood's army at Nashville removed the 
only force capable of blocking the way of Sherman 
across the South, and left him free to march to the sea, 
and, having got in touch with the fleet there, continue 
northward through the Carolinas, marking his way 
with a track of devastation which has been aptly likened 
to that made when Saxe carried fire and sword through 
the Palatinate. 

Grant having settled down to the siege of Richmond, 
Lee, with "Richmond hung like a millstone about his 
neck," a figure he is said to have employed, was now 
forced to guard a line extending from the south of 
Petersburg to the north of Richmond, and to withstand 
with his thinning ranks his able antagonist with an 
ever-growing army and an ever-increasing confidence. 

The able and acute critic of the war, already cited, 
has given it as his opinion that it was not Richmond 
which hung like a millstone about Lee's neck, but the 
Tredegar Iron Works at Richmond. These works, he 
holds, were the "determining factor of Lee's strategy," 
and indeed of the strategy of the whole Civil War. He 
argues that, "without the Tredegar Works to supply 



508 ROBERT E. LEE 

him with artillery and keep his artillery in working order, 
Lee's army could not have held the field two months." 
The defence of Richmond, therefore, was not a mere 
matter of sentiment on the part of the Confederacy, 
but was vital to the continuance of the contest. No 
modern army can hold the field unless it has arsenals 
and machinery for the manufacture and repair of ar- 
tillery, etc., at its command, and he states it as his 
opinion that "the capture by us of Richmond, or the 
abandonment of Richmond by Lee, including as it 
would the loss of the Tredegar Works, would have 
brought the war to a termination at any period, and 
from the very commencement to the end, Richmond, 
or the Tredegar Iron Works, was the vital point of the 
Confederacy." ^ 

That this is, at least, a debatable question, Lee him- 
self would appear to have thought, if he is quoted cor- 
rectly as having referred to Richmond as the millstone 
about his neck. But whether it was Richmond or the 
Tredegar Iron Works which bound him to the line of 
the James, all that winter Lee lay in the trenches 
with his "hands tied," while his army withered and 
perished from want and cold, and while Sherman, 
almost unopposed, burnt, in sheer riot of destruction, 
supplies that might, had they been available, have 
subsisted that army for ten years, and yet by the 
policy of the Confederate Government were left un- 
protected. 

By the end of the year all available resources were 
exhausted. 

* Charles Francis Adams's address on Lee. 



LEE AND GRANT 509 

On the 11th of January, 1865, Lee sent this despatch 
to the Secretary of War: 

Hon. J. A. Seddon: 

There is nothing within reach of this army to be 
impressed. The country is swept clear. Our only 
reliance is upon the railroads. We have but two days' 
supplies. 

R. E. Lee. 

Sherman, on December 21, reached the sea at Sa- 
vannah, and thus was in a position to connect with 
Grant by sea or by a sweep up the coast. The latter 
plan was chosen, possibly in part to let South Carolina 
feel the iron enter into her soul. Sherman crossed her 
borders on February 21, and though Charleston was not 
"sown with salt/' as Halleck had suggested, it felt the 
full weight of the hostility which prompted the sug- 
gestion and response. 

Meantime, the navy, that vast force so little con- 
sidered in all the histories of the war, was consummat- 
ing its work. It performed the part of holding the 
South by the throat while the army hammered the 
life out of her. Following an unsuccessful attempt 
under Butler at the end of December, the capture of 
Fort Fisher, on the North Carolina coast, on January 
15, closed, in Wilmington, the last door through which 
even the meagre supplies of the blockade-runner could 
reach the Confederacy, and thenceforth the South was, 
as has been well said, "hermetically sealed." 

It may be stated, in passing, that Grant, relieved now 



510 ROBERT E. LEE 

of all political restrictions, promptly relieved Butler 
after his fiasco at Wilmington in December. At the 
end of January an attempt was made to bring about a 
peace through the Hampton Roads Conference, but 
nothing came of it. 

In this extremity the Confederate authorities at last 
recognized what many men had long felt : that on Lee 
now rested the sole hope of the Confederacy, and Mr. 
Davis finally came to the tardy conclusion that he 
should be given command of all the armies of the South. 
He accordingly yielded to the Congress and conferred 
on Lee what Mr. Lincoln had conferred on Grant nearly 
a year before: untrammelled command of all the forces 
of the country. Unfortunately, it was too late. The 
President of the United States could furnish his gen- 
eral all the men he required and all the supplies they 
needed. The President of the Confederate States could 
furnish his general neither men nor supplies. The 
"seed corn" of the Confederacy had all been ground. 
Lee, when he received his appointment, faced an empty 
and broken-down commissariat, a country denuded of 
men, swept clean of supplies, with every avenue of en- 
trance closed and every means of conveyance crippled. 
The South Atlantic States were clamorous, and not 
unnaturally, for protection against the army, which, 
under a vandal leader, was sweeping almost unopposed 
across them, marking its course with a swath of fire 
which spared nothing. 

On February 6 Lee was appointed to the command 
in chief of the armies of the Confederacy. But it was 
too late. He telegraphed the Secretary of War on 



LEE AND GRANT 511 

February 8, 1865, a statement of the deplorable con- 
dition of his army : 

Sir: All the disposable force of the right wing of the 
army has been operating against the enemy beyond 
Hatcher's Run since Sunday. Yesterday, the most in- 
clement day of the winter, they had to be retained in 
line of battle, having been in the same condition the 
two previous days and nights. I regret to be obliged 
to state that under these circumstances, heightened by 
assaults and fire of the enemy, some of the men had 
been without meat for three days, and all were suffer- 
ing from reduced rations and scant clothing, exposed to 
battle, cold, hail, and sleet. I have directed Colonel 
Coler, chief commissary, who reports that he has not 
a pound of meat at his disposal, to visit Richmond and 
see if nothing can be done. If some change is not made 
and the Commissary Department reorganized, I appre- 
hend dire results. The physical strength of the men, 
if their courage survives, must fail under such treat- 
ment. Our cavalry has to be dispersed for want of 
forage. Fitz Lee's and Lomax's Divisions are scattered 
because supplies cannot be transported where their 
services are required. I had to bring William H. F. 
Lee's Division forty miles Sunday night to get him in 
position. Taking these facts in connection with the 
paucity of our numbers you must not be surprised if 

calamity befalls us. . . . -n tt^ t n i 

-^ R. E. Lee, GeneraL 

President Davis endorsed on this report: ''This is 
too sad to be patiently considered and cannot have 
occurred without criminal neglect or gross incapac- 
ity. ..." A comment as true to-day as when Lee 
set before him plainly the tragic fact that his army 
was fast perishing at its post. 



512 ROBERT E. LEE 

Unfortunately for the South, the rest of the Presi- 
dent's endorsement, "Let supphes be had by purchase 
or borrowing or other possible mode," was inefficacious. 
There was no longer any possible mode by which sup- 
plies could be had. The South was exhausted. Vir- 
ginia had been swept clean and there were no means of 
transporting supplies from elsewhere. 

Subsistence could not be, or, at least, was not, fur- 
nished, and while the sword attacked in front, hunger 
assailed in the rear. His men had, he wrote the War 
Department in February, endured all that flesh and 
blood could endure. In the battle line, suffering from 
cold and exhaustion, they not only had not had meat 
for three days, but to them came the cry from their 
starving families at home. His officers reported ''not 
a few cases" in which men had gone insane from priva- 
tion, hardship, and strain. No wonder that his num- 
bers dwindled and that his tardy elevation, in Feb- 
ruary, to the position of commander-in-chief was futile 
to recoup the destruction. 

Lee had already carried the fortunes of the Con- 
federacy on his shoulders for, at least, two years longer 
than the Confederacy could have survived without his 
genius to sustain it ; and now the time had come when 
no mortal power could longer support it.* Its end 
had come. All had gone except the indomitable and 
immortal spirit of its people. 

In this desperate state of affairs, however, Lee ap- 
plied himself to refill his depleted ranks by every pos- 
sible means. His first general order, after that in 

* E. P. Alexander's "Memoirs," p. 599. 



LEE AND GRANT 513 

which he on the 9th of February assumed formally the 
chief command of the Confederate forces, was one 
"offering pardon to all deserters and those improperly 
absent if they returned to duty within twenty days 
(except those who had deserted to the enemy), and an 
exhortation to all Southern soldiers to respond to the 
call of honor and duty." He had for some time ad- 
vocated the enlistment of negroes as soldiers. "Six 
months before he had advocated their employment as 
teamsters, laborers, and mechanics in place of whites, 
who, being replaced, could be restored to the ranks." ^ 
He now proposed to employ them as soldiers, feeling 
assured that he could make as good soldiers of them as 
the enemy. 

But as imperative as was the need of men, an even 
more impossible requirement to meet was the supplies 
and equipment. Wilmington, the last port through 
which these had dribbled in from the outside world, 
had, as stated, been closed when Fort Fisher fell; and 
the main source of supply — capture from the enemy — 
had been cut off when the army, which had been wont 
to act as its own ordnance department, was confined 
to the defensive lines of a siege. 

The Tredegar Iron Works at Richmond, the chief 
factory for ordnance within the Confederacy, as we have 
seen, the preservation of which is, perhaps, the key to 
much of the astonishing stubbornness of the Confederate 
Government to defend that city to the last, was com- 
pelled to perform itself every labor which entered into 
the manufacture of their guns. That is, it was obliged 

IF. Lee's "Lee," p. 307. 



514 ROBERT E. LEE 

to mine the ore in the mountains, to mine the coal and 
cut the wood with whicli to smelt this ore, to transport 
it to the iron works, and to mine the coal with which to 
manufacture the guns/ 

Thus, Lee, on his promotion, found himself with a 
barren honor and a useless authority. His appeal to 
the people to furnish him for his cavalry all saddles, 
revolvers, pistols, and carbines that might be in their 
possession is a proof of the extremity to which he had 
come. 

One of the first acts he performed as commander 
proved how widely he differed from the authorities in 
Richmond in his views of the situation. Beauregard 
was in the South endeavoring, with such troops as 
could be mustered, to hold Sherman at bay; but the 
force under his hand was hopelessly inadequate for 
the task. Lee had Johnston reinstated in command, 
from which he had been so disastrously removed by 
the Southern President in the preceding July at the 
clamor of the South Atlantic States, panic-stricken 
by his Fabian policy. Lee's reason was unanswerable. 
"Beauregard has a difficult task to perform," he said 
to the Secretary of War, "and one of his best officers, 
General Hardee, is incapacitated by sickness. I have 
heard that his own health is indifferent; should his 
health give way there is no one in the department to 
replace him, nor have I any one to send there. Gen- 
eral J. E. Johnston is the only officer I know who has 
the confidence of the army and the people, and if he 
were ordered to report to me I would place him there 

* Address of Colonel Archer Anderson on the Tredegar Company. 



LEE AND GRANT 515 

on duty." He was so ordered on the 23d of February, 
and was placed on duty in command of the Army of 
the Tennessee and all troops in the department of 
South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. But the major 
portion of the fine army he had commanded in the 
summer of 1864 had been extirpated on the bloody 
fields of Franklin and Nashville. Johnston's force be- 
fore Sherman numbered only 18,761 — truly '^an army 
in efhgy." With this force, as he wrote Lee, he "could 
only annoy Sherman, not stop him," for Sherman, after 
Schofield joined him at Goldsboro, had nearly 90,000 
men. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE LAST DITCH 

Lee now knew that he had but one chance that gave 
promise of success. This was to withdraw his depleted 
arm.}^ from its trenches, where it had wasted away in 
its long vigil, and, marching around Grant's extended 
left, head for Danville on the southern border of Vir- 
ginia, where he could get supplies and where, uniting 
with Johnston, he might fall on Sherman and destroy 
him before Grant could come to his rescue. It was a 
plan which commended itself to both the Southern gen- 
erals, and Johnston wrote Lee: ''You have only to 
decide where to meet Sherman. I will be near him." 

It was a difficult and hazardous undertaking, for his 
lines extended for over thirty miles so close to the lines 
of his alert and powerful antagonist that the men in the 
two armies used to call across to each other and ex- 
change the rough banter of the trenches. A story went 
the rounds that winter that after one of the movements 
in which the Confederates had checked decisively the 
Union advance, they were shouting their exasperating 
triumph across the trenches. At length the hectoring 
could be stood no longer and the challenge came back, 
''Swap generals with us and we'll come over and lick 
h — 1 out of you!" 

516 



THE LAST DITCH 517 

On the face of conditions there were many chances 
against the successful accompHshment of Lee's design. 
Lee's army was terribly enfeebled by the hardship of 
the winter in the trenches with insufficient shelter and 
food and the strain of constant duty under deadly fire. 
His men were shadows, his horses wraiths. His wagon- 
trains were sent as far away as West Virginia and North 
Carolina in the effort to collect supplies. 

Grant, on the other hand, had an army not only 
more than twice as large, but many times as well nour- 
ished and equipped as that with which Lee had held 
him at bay so long. 

But for the indomitable spirit which Lee's force 
displayed, it might, indeed, have appeared but the 
shadow of an army which, on the night of April 2, 
with hushed and silent voices, moved in the darkness 
from the trenches which they had held so long against 
their foes. 

Another determining factor was Grant himself. He 
had weathered the storms of the autumn and the win- 
ter and now possessed the entire confidence of his su- 
periors at Washington. Sherman's "spectacular raid," 
as Schofield termed his "march to the sea," and Sheri- 
dan's sweep down the valley and across the Piedmont 
to Grant's camp on the Appomattox, had shown that 
the South was now but a shell, emptied of all that had 
made her formidable. It was known now in Wash- 
ington that there was no longer any body to those 
spectral armies whose tramp had been wont to fly on 
the wings of rumor and keep Washington city in a con- 
stant nightmare. Grant had satisfied the authorities 



518 ROBERT E. LEE 

that the army of the South-west was no longer a peril, 
that Sherman could handle Johnston and he himself 
could crush Lee. He was now as well aware as Lee 
himself that Lee must soon abandon his defensive line 
or starve in it ; and he prepared to prevent the former 
by a movement which should envelop and lock him 
in his trenches and force him to capitulate. 

Lee's perception of the situation at this time was 
expressed by him to the Secretary of War in terms which 
could not have been clearer had the events he forecast 
actually occurred. ''You may expect," he said to 
General Breckinridge on February 21, "Sheridan to 
move down the valley and Stoneman from Knox- 
ville. What, then, will become of those sections of the 
country? Bragg will be forced back by Schofield, I 
fear, and until I abandon the James River, nothing 
can be sent from the army. Grant is preparing to 
draw out by his left with the intent of enveloping me; 
he may be preparing to anticipate my withdrawal. 
Everything of value should be removed from Rich- 
mond. The cavalry and artillery are still scattered for 
want of provender, and our supply and ammunition 
trains, which ought to be with the army in case of 
a sudden movement, are absent collecting provisions 
and forage in West Virginia and North Carolina. You 
will see to what straits we are reduced." 

"To what straits," indeed! 

To his wife, who had sent him "a bag of socks for 
the army," he wrote on the same day: "You will have 
to send down your offerings as soon as you can and 
bring your work to a close, for I think General Grant 



THE LAST DITCH 519 

will move against us soon — within a week if nothing 
prevents — and no man can tell what may be the re- 
sult. But trusting to a merciful God, who does not 
always give the battle to the strong, I pray we may not 
be overwhelmed. I shall, however, endeavor to do my 
duty and fight to the last. Should it be necessary to 
abandon our position to prevent being surrounded, 
what will you do? Will you remain or leave the city? 
You must consider the question and make up your 
mind. It is a fearful condition and we must rely for 
guidance and protection upon a kind providence." ^ 

Thus, notwithstanding the odds against him, Lee, 
trusting in God and reliant on the heroic remnant of 
his army that remained, believed that he could extri- 
cate his army from the enveloping meshes of Grant's 
steadily extending lines and effect a union with John- 
ston. He so notified the government in Richmond 
early in March, and it was understood that he would 
move as soon as the roads would admit of his doing so. 

The suggestion, slight as it was, of a possibility that 
something might prevent Grant's moving within a week 
related to a movement which had already taken form 
in his mind to make one final effort to forestall Grant 
and possibly surprise and defeat him. Before aban- 
doning his defences and taking this final step which 
would surrender Richmond, he determined to make 
one last, desperate attempt to break Grant's line in 
the hope that, should fortune favor him, he might de- 
feat his resolute antagonist at the very moment when 
he thought to pluck the fruit of his long waiting. In 

1 Fitzhugh Lee's "Lee," p. 170. 



520 ROBERT E. LEE 

any event he hoped to compel Grant to withdraw 
troops from his extended left to protect his right at 
the point of attack on his right near the Appomattox. 
This would, at least, defer the enveloping of Lee's right, 
which Grant was pushing forward, and would postpone 
the abandonment of Richmond and give him time till 
the roads became less impassable. 

Arrangements were, therefore, now made to attack 
the forts on the right of the line held by the Army of 
the Potomac toward the Appomattox, with a view to 
seizing Fort Stedman and what were supposed to be 
a number of forts on the high ground in the rear com- 
manding it, together with the lines on either side. 
Accordingly, before dawn on the 25th of March, Gor- 
don, who now commanded E well's Corps, and who, hav- 
ing suggested it, and being eager to make the attempt, 
had been placed in charge of the movement, massed 
his men, his own corps with a part of Longstreet's and 
Hill's, behind the cover of the trenches opposite the 
Federal entrenchment known as Fort Stedman. At 
this point the opposing lines were only one hundred and 
fifty yards apart, and the ditches where the pickets lay 
only fifty yards apart. Fort Stedman, with three forts 
beyond it, was to be captured by a dash, and through 
the breach thus made, Gordon's troops and a large 
body ordered down by General Lee from Longst reefs 
Corps were to pass, seize the high ground in the rear, 
and sweep along the entrenchments held by the Ninth 
Corps, being "joined by the other troops as their fronts 
were cleared." The cavalry was to pass through the 
clearing and then "gallop to the rear, dcstro}' Grant's 



THE LAST DITCH 521 

railroad and telegraph lines, and cut away his pontoons 
across the river, while the infantry swept down the 
rear of the Union entrenchments." 

In the darkness of the hour preceding dawn, Gor- 
don, with three columns, preceded by a storming 
party of three hundred picked men, and by picked axe- 
men to cut away the abatis and fraise in front of the 
Union lines, led by guides, moved out of the Confeder- 
are lines, and, having seized and overpowered the pick- 
ets without the firing of a shot, rushed on, and, with 
a dash, captured Fort Stedman, together with a num- 
ber of supporting batteries. This was accomplished 
with the loss of only a half dozen men, and the troops 
swept along the breastworks on either side, capturing 
cannon and mortars and nearly a thousand prisoners, 
including those in the fort itself, together with Gen- 
eral McLaughlin, its commander. Having been com- 
pletely successful thus far, they pressed forward with 
the expectation of seizing the forts in the rear. It 
happened, however, that what had been supposed to 
be forts open at the gorge, were in fact redoubts that 
had a commanding fire on both Fort Stedman and also 
on the lines and open batteries to the right and left. 
In these redoubts the Ninth Corps was now being con- 
centrated, and as the day broke, its entire force was 
directed against Gordon's troops in the captured bat- 
teries below them. The storming parties had pushed 
forward and the skirmishers were already at the mili- 
tary railroad and telegraph lines ; but in the melee and 
the darkness the guides had either deserted or been 
lost, and the storming parties, finding no forts as they 



522 ROBERT E. LEE 

expected, fell into confusion and were either forced 
back or captured. The large body of troops sent by 
General Lee from Longstreet's Corps had been delayed 
by the breaking down of trains and failed to reach 
Gordon in time to render assistance. Thus, daylight 
found Gordon with his plans only half executed, and 
General Parke's prompt concentration of his troops on 
the heights which commanded the captured batteries 
prevented further progress; and, more than this, it 
rendered the lines already seized untenable, for they 
were subjected to a cross-fire of artillery and infantry. 
Lee, finding that further advance was impossible, or- 
dered Gordon to retire; but this was far more diffi- 
cult than the advance had been. Both artillery and 
infantry swept the space beyond the lines and only 
a portion got back alive, the loss of the Confederates 
having been very heavy, including 1,949 prisoners, 
among whom were 71 officers.^ Thus, came to a dis- 
astrous end one of the most daring, and what promised 
to be most brilliant, feats in the history of Lee's army. 

This was, as General Gordon has well said, the in- 
auguration of the period of more than two weeks of 
almost incessant battle, which began on the morning 
of March 25 and ended with the last charge of Lee's 
army, made likewise by Gordon's men on the morning 
of April 9 at Appomattox.^ 

As a sequel to these far-reaching conditions, under 
the policy of attrition which had gone on from month to 



'Humphreys' "Virginia Campaign in 1S64-65." 
* General John B. Gordon, "Reminiscences of the Civil War," pp. 
400-^13. 



THE LAST DITCH 523 

month, on the fatal 2d of April, Lee, following an ex- 
tension of Grant's lines around his flank, which broke 
his connection with the South and threatened to en- 
velop him, announced to his government that he could 
no longer maintain the long line from south of Peters- 
burg to north of Richmond. 

On the 29th of March, as Lee was preparing to evac- 
uate Petersburg and start south to unite with Johnston 
and attack Sherman, Grant, who was so apprehensive 
of such a movement that he said he never awoke with- 
out expecting to hear that Lee had slipped away, began 
to move around his right to foil it. To prevent this, 
Lee was forced to withdraw troops from other parts of 
his line, and Grant promptly proceeded to take ad- 
vantage of this fact. 

On the 1st of April, following a repulse on the even- 
ing before in front of Lee's extreme right, Sheridan 
attacked and defeated, at Five Forks, Pickett, who had 
left a long gap of several miles defended only by pickets 
between his troops and the nearest line. And Grant, 
having carried Lee's outer defences, ordered a general 
assault for the next day. Lee, knowing the wasted 
condition of his army and the impossibility of holding 
against Grant's contemplated assault his long-stretched 
line, decided to execute at once, if possible, his plan to 
abandon the lines he had held for nearly ten months 
and move southward to effect a junction with Johnston. 
He notified the government in Richmond, arranged 
for provisions to meet him at Amelia Court House, 
and that night executed with skill the difficult feat of 
extricating his reduced army from its perilous position 



524 ROBERT E. LEE 

and started on a retreat southward. Such, in general 
terms, were the steps which led to the abandonment of 
Richmond. 

In more detail these steps were as follows : 

As early as the middle of March, Grant issued instruc- 
tions to the Army of the Potomac for its guidance in 
anticipation of Lee's abandoning his lines. On the 24th 
of March he issued orders for a general turning m.ove- 
ment to begin on the 29th, by which he proposed to 
seize the Danville and South-side (or Lynchburg) Rail- 
ways and turn Lee's right. It was the next day on 
which Lee attempted unsuccessfully to break his lines 
at Fort Stedman. 

On the 27th Grant held a conference with Sherman, 
who had come from North Carolina for the purpose, 
and, unfolding to him his plan for a general movement 
on the 29th, gave him his instructions. He was to 
threaten Raleigh, and then, turning to the right, strike 
the Roanoke River near Weldon, on the North Carolina 
border, from which point he could move to Burkeville, 
at the junction of the Danville and the Lynchburg 
Railways, and intercept Lee's retreat on Danville or 
Lynchburg, or could join Grant before Richmond. 

Grant was now confident of success, and he might 
well be sanguine. He had 124,700 men ready for duty 
and 369 guns, while Lee had not over 35,000 muskets 
and perhaps not over 10,000 artillery and cavalry. 
Humphreys, in his careful and admirable work, "The 
Virginia Campaign of '64 and '65," states Grant's effec- 
tive force at the end of March to have been 124,700 men 
of all arms, and Lee's effective force to have been 



THE LAST DITCH 525 

57,000 men of all arms. But General Fitzhugh Lee 
states that he had at that time "35,000 muskets, but 
after Five Forks and in the encounter of March 31 and 
April 1 and 2 he had only 20,000 muskets available, 
and of all arms not over 25,000, when he began the re- 
treat that terminated at Appomattox Court House." ^ 
Whatever the disparity in numbers. Grant's force 
was so vastly preponderant that he could mass more 
men at any one point of Lee's line of thirty-odd miles 
than Lee had in his whole army, and yet threaten with 
a superior force the entire remainder of those lines. 
On the 27th, Grant, having determined not to defer his 
movement till the 29th, as originally planned, but to act 
at once, despatched Ord with the Army of the James 
to his extreme left, who, marching by night, was en- 
abled to take position unobserved in the rear of the 
Second Corps, thirty-six miles from his former position. 
Sheridan was ordered next day to cross Hatcher's Run 
the following morning (the 29th), and proceeding to 
and beyond Dinwiddie Court House, near which the 
Second and Fifth Corps would be posted, push on 
and take a position which would so threaten Lee's 
right as to force him out of his entrenched lines. If 
Lee still held his lines, then Sheridan was to proceed 
against his lines of communication, the Danville and 
the South-side Railways, and destroy them effectively. 
This latter alternative was, however, countermanded 
next day. Humphreys, Warren, and Wright were also 
set in motion to strengthen Grant's left and carry 

* F. Lee's "Lee," p. 373. E. P. Alexander's. "Military Memoirs," 
p. 590. 



526 ROBERT E. LEE 

through the turning movement, and Parke with the 
Ninth Corps was to occupy Wright's entrenchments 
when the Sixth Corps should be withdrawn. It was a 
formidable movement and was so recognized by Lee. 
But he was prepared to meet it with such force as he 
had. Having learned, on March 28, that Sheridan's 
cavalry was held on the left of the Army of the Poto- 
mac, Lee at once sent General Anderson with Bushrod 
Johnson's Division and Wise's Brigade to his extreme 
right, and brought over from his extreme left, on the 
north side of the James, Fitz Lee's Cavalry Division, 
and putting him in command of all the cavalry there, 
sent him to attack Sheridan, who was moving toward 
the important strategic position of Five Forks, where 
five roads met some four miles to the westward of Lee's 
extreme right. Pickett's Division, whch under its 
brave commander had won for itself imperishable fame 
on the field of Gettysburg, was brought over from the 
left and sent to the extreme right to support Fitz Lee 
and protect that threatened portion of the Confederate 
line. At the same time Hill extended his line to the 
right from Hatcher's Run, where Lee's extreme right 
had rested. A road, known as the White Oak Road, 
runs westerly to the cross-roads at Five Forks, some 
four miles distant, where the Ford Road crosses it and 
the road to Dinwiddie Court House, eight miles to 
the south-east, joins them. Fitz Lee's Cavalry Divis- 
ion arrived at Sutherland Station, on the South-side 
Railroad, on the night of the 29th, and on the morning 
of the 30th moved to Five Forks, and thence on down 
the Dinwiddie Court House Road, where it met and 



THE LAST DITCH 527 

held back Merritt's division, which was on its way to 
Five Forks. That evening Pickett seized Five Forks 
with three brigades of his own division — Corse's, 
Terry's, and Steuart's — and two of Johnson's Brigades 
— Ransom's and Wallace's — and was joined by Rosser's 
and W. H. F. Lee's Cavalry Divisions. 

Next day Lee made his last offensive counter move. 

It rained heavily on the night of the 29th and all day 
on the 30th, rendering the clay soil so deep as almost 
to put a stop to Grant's movement, for at half-past 
eight o'clock on the 31st, corps commanders were noti- 
fied that there would be no movement of troops that 
day.* But not so with Lee. He now knew the force 
in front of him and before turning his back he would 
strike one more blow. The Fifth Corps had been 
pushed forward by Sheridan and lay fronting the White 
Oak Road, on Warren's suggestion that he might be 
able to interpose between Pickett at Five Forks and 
the rest of Lee's army and isolate the former. Lee 
proposed to take advantage of this, and, in connection 
with Pickett's attack, turn the left flank of the Fifth 
Corps with a part of Hill's and Anderson's Corps and 
roll it up. Accordingly, on the morning of the 31st 
he sent McGowan's and Grade's Brigades to attack 
Warren's flank, while Hunton's and Wise's Brigades 
were to attack in front. The opposing forces met as 
they were proceeding with the movements ordered and 
a sharp battle ensued, in which the Confederates drove 
Warren's troops beyond a branch of Gravelly Run to 
the cover of their artillery, with a loss of 1,400 men; 

'Humphreys' " Virginia Campaign of '64 and '65," p. 330. 



528 ROBERT E. LEE 

but here Humphreys' corps came to their support and 
the Confederates were in turn driven back to their en- 
trenchments. Lee thought this movement of sufficient 
importance to direct it in person. 

Meantime, on the morning of the 31st, Fitz Lee's 
Cavalry moved forward on the Dinwiddie Road, where 
Devin's division was encountered, and while Munford's 
Brigade was left to hold them, Pickett, with Fitz Lee's 
other two divisions, W. H. F. Lee's and Rosser's, 
moved by Little Five Forks to flank Sheridan, and after 
stiff fighting at the crossings of Chamberlain's Run, 
which were stoutly held by Crook, Davies, and Gregg, 
they carried the crossings, and Munford having forced 
Devin back, they drove back Sheridan's cavalry, which 
''fought stubbornly," forcing them back to the court- 
house, where "a spirited and obstinate contest ensued, 
which lasted until night." ^ This defeat of Sheridan 
caused so much uneasiness that Meade hastened to send 
forward heavy reinforcements of infantry to his aid, and 
a confusion of orders led to a widening of the breach 
between the commander of the Fifth Corps and the 
commander of the Army of the Potomac, which bore 
disastrous consequences for the former next day. The 
knowledge that these reinforcements were on the way 
to Sheridan caused Pickett to withrdaw that night to 
Five Forks, where he posted his command in so isolated 
a position that it led to its destruction on the following 
day and contributed to destroy the last chance which 
Lee might have had to defeat his adversary. 

When he retired to Five Forks, Pickett entrenched 

'Humphreys' " Virginia Campaign of '64 and '65," p. 335. 



THE LAST DITCH 529 

along the White Oak Road, with the cross-roads near 
the centre of his line, which extended for nearly a mile 
on either side, with a short return at the left. This left 
an interval of some three miles between his left and 
the extreme right of Lee's regular defensive works at 
Hatcher's Run. It has been said that the line of battle 
itself was sufficiently well posted, with W. H. F. Lee's 
Cavalry guarding the right with three guns of Pegram's 
battalion, and Munford's Cavalry guarding the left, 
with McGregor's battery at the return, and with the 
brigades of Corse, Terry, Steuart, Ransom, and Wallace 
in order from right to left along the line, supported by 
three guns at the Forks. But the long interval of three 
miles between the left and Lee's works was held only 
by a line of cavalry pickets and offered a temptation 
to any enterprising enemy. Such a one now com- 
manded the army in front of Five Forks. 

When Sheridan, now reinforced by the Fifth Corps, 
discovered at daylight of the 1st that the force which 
had driven him back the day before had been with- 
drawn from his front, he promptly pushed forward 
again and advanced to within a short distance of the 
White Oak Road, where he found Pickett posted along 
the road in line of battle. Having learned of the 
weakness of Pickett's line with the long interval left 
between him and the regular entrenchments of Lee's 
army, he made his disposition to break through this 
gap and cut Pickett off from the rest of the army. He 
directed his cavalry against Pickett's right, and or- 
dered Warren to move forward against Pickett's left, 
with his troops so disposed as to contain him with a 



530 ROBERT E. LEE 

portion of them demonstrating against his front, while 
with the rest he should cross the White Oak Road, 
attack the angle of the return on White Oak Road, 
sweep around through the undefended interval and, 
wheeling, roll up his left flank. The flank movement 
was carried through successfully, and though the re- 
turn on Pickett's left was found farther to the westward 
than had been supposed, the troops of the Fifth Corps, 
which had passed through the interval and reached his 
rear, changed their direction and, after a sharp fight 
at the angle, swept away his left, capturing over 3,000 
prisoners and a number of colors. From here they 
swept on down the breastworks, and though they were 
held back for a while by the stout resistance offered 
by the Confederates who formed at right angles to 
the breastworks and held on stubbornly, they were 
too strong and overlapped the Confederate line too far 
to be long withstood. 

The contest was, perhaps, too unequal to have been 
successfully maintained even had the Confederate com- 
mander been on the field. But both General Pickett 
and his cavalry conmiander. General Fitzhugh Lee, 
were several miles away, on the north side of Hatcher's 
Run. Here, by a curious mischance, owing, it is 
thought, to the conformation of the ground, the heavy 
forest, and the atmospheric conditions, the sound of the 
battle did not reach them until after the Confederate 
left had been flanked and destroyed. It was said that 
the two generals were engaged, after the arduous and 
hungry work of the preceding days, in enjoying a meal 
which some one had provided for them, when a mes- 



THE LAST DITCH 531 

senger dashed up and informed them of the battle that 
was raging a few miles away and of the disaster which 
had befallen the Confederate left. They at once 
mounted and dashed to the front ; but the advance of 
the Federals had proceeded so far that only General 
Pickett, who had gotten his horse first and was in ad- 
vance, was able to cross the bridge over the stream 
before it was seized, and General Fitzhugh Lee was 
compelled to ride up the stream some distance to find 
a crossing place. 

WTien Pickett arrived on the field he found his left 
shattered and almost destroyed, with the remnant that 
had not been captured falling sullenl}- back along 
the "VMiite Oak and Ford Roads toward Five Forks, 
with the Federal infantrv^, both on the flank and rear, 
pushing them hotly. Ayres's, Griffin's, and Crawford's 
divisions, under the personal super\^ision of General 
Warren, were moving on their rear. Pickett tried to 
stem the advancing tide by taking Terry's Brigade 
(commanded now by Colonel Mayo) from the entrench- 
ments to the right and flinging it across the Ford Road 
to meet the force pushing toward Five Forks on the 
Confederate rear. Here for a time a stand was made 
by Mayo's and Ransom's Brigades and McGregor's 
Batter}^, which had escaped capture wdth the left wing; 
but the point could not now be held, and Mayo was 
ordered to get his men out and make his way to the 
South-side Railroad, the guns of the batter}^ falling 
into the enemy's hands. Pickett, finding that ^layo 
could not hold his ground, now withdrew Corse also 
from the entrenchments and placed him at right angles 



532 ROBERT E. LEE 

with them to cover the retreat, while Steuart, supported 
by Pegram's other guns, was still holding on at Five 
Forks; but they were soon forced to retreat, and the 
guns, like the others, fell into the enemy's hands, the 
gallant young Colonel Pegram meeting a soldier's death 
in his effort to hold on to the last. 

Meantime, Custer with two of his brigades had 
charged the Confederate right, where W. H. F. Lee was 
holding the line, and had been held back by a counter 
charge of one of Lee's Brigades in what the historian 
of "The Virginia Campaign of 1864-65" terms a brill- 
iant encounter, ''in which Lee maintained his position." 
Later Fitzhugh's Brigade of Devin's Division carried 
the breastworks at Five Forks, capturing the three 
guns at that point, and Lee was withdrawn to the 
South-side Railroad, where Fitz Lee was in charge, 
where he was joined by Munford and the remnant of 
Pickett's shattered division of infantry. Here they 
were also joined by Hunton's Brigade of Pickett's 
Division and later by General R. H. Anderson with 
three other brigades (Wise's, Grade's, and Fulton's), 
whom General Lee, on the announcement of Pick- 
ett's defeat, had sent to cover the retreat and to stop 
the Federal advance around the right wing of his 
army. 

The historian of ''The Virginia Campaign of 
1864-65" has stated, in his admirable work on this 
campaign, that it appeared a grave mistake to him 
"to require Pickett to fight at Five Forks," instead of 
allowing him to retire to Sutherland Station, where he 
could be reinforced at need from Lee's right. The 



THE LAST DITCH 533 

statement would appear to show a misapprehension on 
his part. Pickett was sent to Five Forks on the 30th 
to prevent Sheridan's cavahy from seizing the point 
and destroying the South-side Railroad. At that time 
there was no infantry force near Dinwiddle Court 
House. In the battle of the 31st Sheridan was driven 
back to Dinwiddle Court House and nightfall found 
Pickett still pressing him back. When during the night, 
on finding the Fifth Corps coming up on his flank, 
Pickett withdrew to Five Forks, the situation had so 
completely changed that he should have promptly noti- 
fied General Lee of the change, instead of posting his 
men at the Forks as though it were simply a raiding 
cavalry force in his front, and going off to the north 
side of the stream to refresh himself. 

The battle of Five Forks was disastrous to the repu- 
tation of another gallant soldier and capable general 
beside the Confederate commander. At nightfall that 
evening General Sheridan, who had been expressly 
authorized to do so by General Grant should his judg- 
ment justify it, relieved General Warren of his com- 
mand and ordered him to report directly to Grant. It 
was a sad and almost inexplicable termination of a 
fine career, for, although Warren was later acquitted 
of most of the charges formulated before the court of 
inquiry which he demanded, he was laid aside for the 
rest of the campaign and failed to be present at the 
close to which he had contributed so much. Sheri- 
dan's charge was that Warren did not exert himself to 
get up his corps as rapidly as he might have done ; that 
later in the attack on Pickett's entrenchments he 



534 ROBERT E. LEE 

"became dissatisfied with him"; and that Warren 
did not exert himself to inspire confidence in his troops. 
The court's opinion was against there being ground for 
these charges, for Warren had acted with conspicuous 
gallantry during a part of the engagement, and it was 
generally considered among soldiers that the ground of 
the charges was Warren's "temperament,'' which had 
from time to time caused friction with his superior 
officers. He had done the State much service. 

Lee, usually so tolerant of the mistakes of his sub- 
ordinates, found it hard to forgive the error of Pickett, 
which cost him so fatal a loss, and but for the complete 
collapse which followed so soon on the disaster of Five 
Forks, the commander at Five Forks would probably 
have been called to account for it. 

The end was now in sight. The troops sent by Lee 
on the night of the 1st under Anderson to cover the 
retreat of Pickett's shattered force weakened Lee's al- 
ready thinned lines to the breaking point, and Grant 
was prompt to take advantage of it. Knowing that 
Lee would endeavor to rescue the remnant of the force 
that had been routed at Five Forks, and fearing that 
he might fall upon Sheridan and destroy him, and at 
the same time might withdraw from Petersburg and 
retreat to Danville, Grant ordered an attack "all along 
the line" at daylight next morning. To prevent the 
first, he ordered Humphreys with the Second Corps to 
assault Lee's right immediately if "a vulnerable point" 
could be found, and if not, to send Miles's division to 
Sheridan's aid. A fierce attack was accordingly made 
on Lee's entrenchments along his left and the pickets 



THE LAST DITCH 535 

were driven in ; but, though the assaults were continued 
through the night, the Hues were held firmly. 

The Army of Northern Virginia was but a remnant — 
less than one thousand men to a mile of its defences; 
but that renmant, as the next hours proved, was ''still 
formidable." 

Lee recognized that the defeat at Five Forks was the 
end of his defence of Richmond and that Grant knew 
it equally well. He knew that it would inspire Grant 
and his lieutenants to bend every energy to reap the 
fruits of this signal fortune, and that he would promptly 
endeavor to overwhelm him and prevent his withdrawal 
and march on Danville. Accordingly, he prepared, as 
best he might, to meet the assault which was coming 
and arrange for his escape from Grant's converging 
lines. The two generals never handled their forces better. 

The night assault on his right by the Second Corps 
had been repulsed, but with the break of dawn came 
the flood. The force that had been sent under Ander- 
son to save Pickett's broken troops and bar Grant's 
progress around his right was away to the westward 
confronted by Sheridan's cavalry and the Fifth Corps, 
flushed with the victory of Five Forks. On his extreme 
right were four of Hill's Brigades commanded by Heth 
(McGowan's, McRae's, Cook's, and Scales's), and next 
on his right lay four more brigades of Hill's Corps 
(Davis's, McComb's, Lane's, and Thomas's) confront- 
ing Wright's and Ord's corps. To their left lay Gor- 
don's Corps confronting Parke, who extended from 
Lee's centre to the extreme left on the Appomattox. 

On Lee's right the cannon had been roaring fitfully 



536 ROBERT E. LEE 

# 

all night. On his centre and left they had subsided 
after midnight, but before the earliest crack of dawn 
they had begun again with renewed fury, announcing 
the storm about to break. Before the earliest dawn 
a signal gun boomed from the darkness in the direction 
of Fort Fisher, a strong redoubt to the south-west of 
Petersburg, at the angle where Lee had stopped Grant's 
endeavor to extend around his right during the winter 
and had deflected his line to the southward. In a 
few minutes the troops of the Sixth Corps were found 
coming out of the darkness, and within a short time 
a general assault was in progress.^ As far to the east- 
ward as the bank of the Appomattox the lines w^re 
aflame, for the Army of Northern Virginia, worn to a 
skeleton, was making its last concerted stand as a 
whole against the overwhelming number of the Army 
of the Potomac. It was a day which for daring and 
resolution was not exceeded by any day in the war. 

Accompanied by pioneer parties armed with axes 
and tools to clear away the abatis and chevaux-de- 
frise, the columns came on like the waves of the sea. 
In some places they found that there were no abatis or 
chevaux-de-frise to cut away — they had been burnt 
for firewood during the deadly rigor of winter to keep 
the men in the trenches from freezing, or had been 
opened to give the troops within the trenches "con- 
venience of access to the front." In some places at 
the point of Wright's attack on the right there were 
hardly more muskets than a double picket line to op- 
pose the enemy. Yet these with the artillery in the 

* Humphreys' "Virginia Campaign in 1864-65." 



THE LAST DITCH 537 

redoubts made a stout defence before they were over- 
whelmed and their Hne carried. The commander of 
the Sixth Corps reckoned that he lost over 1,000 men 
in fifteen minutes. Lee's line, however, was pierced, 
and, leaving a brigade to hold the point, the enemy 
turned down the entrenchments and captured guns 
and prisoners as far as Hatcher's Run. While they 
were thus engaged, Wilcox made a gallant effort to re- 
cover the line and drove out the brigade left to hold it, 
but was in turn driven out again by the heavy rein- 
forcements of Porter's division and two of Turner's 
brigades of the Twenty-sixth Corps. Thus fought to 
the end the Army of Northern Virginia. 

The piercing of this line forced Lee to bend his right 
back to the bank of the Appomattox to close the ap- 
proach to Petersburg to the force which, having broken 
through his line, was now heading for the city. So 
close had they come that General A. P. Hill rode into 
a party of ''stragglers," and, as he turned to escape, 
was shot and killed by them. 

Meantime, on Lee's left, his line had to meet a simi- 
lar assault where Parke's corps on the Jerusalem Plank 
Road, pursuing the same plan, advanced at dawn with 
pioneers in front and, breaking through the abatis on 
either side of Fort Sedgwick, swarmed over the outer 
works and captured the guns in them and also some 800 
prisoners. They found it, however, "a man's fight"; 
every traverse had to be carried, and then the remnant 
of the defenders fell back to an inner line where Gordon 
not only maintained himself, but kept them busy during 
the rest of the day and into the night defending the 



538 ROBERT E. LEE 

outer line, which they had captured against his at- 
tempts at recapture. 

Opposite the fort, at a point near what was known as 
the Crow House, on Lee's right and to the eastward of 
the Boydton Plank Road, was Humphreys' corps, the 
Second Corps. It had carried the picket line the even- 
ing before, but had been stopped by the strong and 
stoutly held defences in their front. On the morning of 
the 2d, having been notified by Meade that Wright and 
Parke both had broken through Lee's lines, General 
Humphreys made another assault and this time was 
successful, capturing the works with the guns and a 
part of the garrison. He now undertook to follow the 
retreating brigades under Heth, which had been cut 
off when Wright broke through Lee's line; but Meade 
directed him against Petersburg, and leaving General 
Miles's division to hold Heth, as Miles said he could do, 
Humphreys turned toward Petersburg with his other 
two divisions. Miles, ever bold, and now flushed with 
victory, attacked Heth's force, on which, finding itself 
thus pressed, turned on him, and although two gal- 
lant assaults were made, he was driven back each time, 
and it was not until the Confederate force was com- 
pletely flanked that it yielded. Heth meantime had 
been called to Petersburg to take command of Hill's 
Corps on the death of that gallant commander. 

When the commanders of the Second and Sixth 
Corps headed their commands for Petersburg it might 
have appeared to them that with the propulsive force 
of the victory of the morning they would be able to 
sweep straight on to the heart of the town. But Lee 



THE LAST DITCH 539 

was an engineer as well as a soldier. He had long fore- 
seen the issue of this day, and he had an inner line 
laid down for this contingency. In the crisis of the 
last few days Lee had endeavored to strengthen his 
weakened lines to the westward by bringing Longstreet 
from the north side of the James, where he commanded, 
to help defend the chief points of attack. On his ex- 
treme right where the lines "closed on the Appomattox " 
the main lines were protected by a creek (Old Town 
Creek), while a half mile or more to the front lay ad- 
vanced works in which were two redoubts, Forts Gregg 
and Whitworth, which commanded the ground about 
them, including the forks into which the Boydton 
Plank Road divides as it approaches Petersburg. They 
were not large nor heavily garrisoned, only some two 
hundred and fifty men and two or three guns in each, 
but the men were picked men and were put there for 
a purpose and they knew it. That purpose was the 
same which held the Spartans at Thermopylae. In 
Fort Gregg were detachments from two of Hill's Bri- 
gades (Thomas's and Lane's) and one of Gordon's 
(Harris's). The remainder of Harris's Brigade was in 
Fort Whitworth, which lay nearest to the Appomattox. 
In the main line of works, stretching on either side, 
lay "Field's Division of Longstreet's Corps, two of 
Gordon's Brigades, and some of Wilcox's troops." 
Against these lines were now thrown the columns of 
Ord and Wright. Foster's division of Gibbon's corps 
charged Fort Gregg, but found it more stoutly defended 
than they had counted on, and on their repulse Tur- 
ner's brigades were sent to their support. The fight for 
these forts was one of the most desperate of the whole 



540 ROBERT E. LEE 

war, and when finally Gibbon's men poured over the 
parapet of Fort Gregg, which had been almost com- 
pletely surrounded, they left the space about it like 
that in front of Fort Whitworth, strewn with the dead 
and wounded, and the remainder of the garrison that 
was left alive within the fort was not conquered until 
after "several determined dashes with the bayonet." 

With the fall of Fort Gregg, Fort Whitworth, at- 
tacked as it was, was no longer tenable, and Wilcox 
withdrew such of the garrison as survived to the main 
lines. 

The possession of these commanding forts by the 
enemy rendered these lines no longer tenable against 
the overwhelming forces massed against them, with 
the impulse of victory upon them, and the end of the 
long struggle for the possession of this gateway of 
Richmond was now a matter of but a few hours. 

General Gibbon, who declared that the assault upon 
Fort Gregg was one of the most desperate of the war, 
reckoned his own losses, most of which occurred around 
these two works, at 714 officers and men. 

Thus, even to the last, the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia showed the temper which Lee had given it in his 
three years' training, and, overwhelmed by sheer might, 
fought for every foot of ground before yielding. By a 
little after sunrise Lee knew that Petersburg and Rich- 
mond were lost and that it was all he would be able to 
do to hold on till night and try to save his army. He 
so notified President Davis, and advised that Richmond 
should be evacuated simultaneously with the with- 
drawal of his troops that night. His telegram was 
handed to Mr. Davis in St. Paul's Church during the 



THE LAST DITCH 541 

morning service as he was about to take the commun- 
ion. He immediately left the church. 

It was recognized instantly that something unusual 
had occurred; and in a short time it was further known 
from the sinister preparations for its abandonment that 
Richmond, which through Lee's genius had held out 
for four years against every assault of war, was lost. 

That night the high officials of the Confederate Gov- 
ernment left Richmond for Danville. Such military 
stores and equipment as remained there were destroyed, 
and from the fire a large part of Richmond was burnt 
over, thus adding to the terrors of evacuation the 
horrors of a vast conflagration. 

While Richmond was not unnaturally in a panic and 
the Confederate Government in confusion, Lee him- 
self, lying in the face of an overwhelming army in the 
flush of final victory, was as serene as if he were the 
victor himself. At three o'clock in the afternoon, Lee 
wrote Mr. Davis a letter which not only casts a vivid 
light on the general situation, but shows the serenity 
and indomitable character of his mind. It deals first 
with the matter of recruiting negro troops, then reports 
Pickett's defeat at Five Forks, and finally states his 
own views as to the abandonment of the James River 
line. 

Petersburg, Virginia, 3 p. m., April 2, 1865. 
His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, 

Richmond, Virginia. 
Mr. President: Your letter of the 1st is just received. 
I have been willing to detach officers to recruit negro 
troops, and sent in the names of many who are desirous 



542 ROBERT E. LEE 

of recruiting companies, battalions, or regiments, to 
the War Department. After receiving the general or- 
ders on that subject establishing recruiting depots in 
the several States, I supposed that this mode of raising 
the troops was preferred. I will continue to submit 
the names of those who offer for the service and whom 
I deem competent to the War Department; but, among 
the numerous applications which are presented, it is 
difficult for me to decide who are suitable for the duty. 
I am glad your Excellency has made an appeal to the 
governors of the States, and hope it will have a good 
effect. I have a great desire to confer with you upon 
our condition, and would have been to Richmond be- 
fore this, but, anticipating movements of the enemy 
which have occurred, I felt unwilling to be absent. I 
have considered our position very critical, but have 
hoped that the enemy might expose himself in some 
way that we might take advantage of and cripple him. 
Knowing when Sheridan moved on our right that our 
cavalry would be unable to resist successfully his ad- 
vance upon our communications, I detached Pickett's 
Division to support it. At first Pickett succeeded in 
driving the enemy, who fought stubbornly; and, after 
being reinforced by the Fifth Corps (United States 
Army), obliged Pickett to recede to the Five Forks on 
the Dinwiddie Court House and Ford's Road, where, 
unfortunately, he was yesterday defeated. To relieve 
him, I had to again draw out three brigades under 
General Anderson, which so weakened our front line 
that the enemy last night and this morning succeeded 
in penetrating it near the Cox Road, separating our 
troops around the town from those on Hatcher's Run. 
This has enabled him to extend to the Appomattox, 
thus enclosing and obliging us to contract our lines to 
the city. I have directed the troops from the lines on 
Hatcher's Run, thus severed from us, to fall back 



THE LAST DITCH i^io 

toward Amelia Court House, and I do not see how I 
can possibly help withdrawing from the city to the 
north side of the Appomattox to-night. There is no 
bridge over the Appomattox above this point nearer 
than Goode's and BeviPs over which the troops above 
mentioned could cross to the north side and be made 
available to us; otherwise I might hold this position 
for a day or two longer, but would have to evacuate it 
eventually, and I think it better for us to abandon the 
whole line of James River to-night if practicable. I 
have sent preparatory orders to all the officers, and will 
be able to tell by night whether or not we can remain 
here another day, but I think every hour now adds to 
our difficulties. I regret to be obliged to write such a 
hurried letter to your Excellency, but I am in the pres- 
ence of the enemy, endeavoring to resist his advance. 
I am most respectfully and truly yours, 

R. E. Lee, General. 

No one of all Lee's letters casts more light on his 
character than this. If any question as to the final 
result lurked in his mind, it is not revealed here. On 
this last day of the defence of Richmond, he deals with 
the questions submitted to. him relating to his army 
quite as he might have dealt with them on the morning 
after Seven Pines, when he first assumed command. 
In the letter speaks the constant soul of the South, to 
which she is entitled for all that she has achieved in the 
history of the country. 

From this letter it will be seen that even to the last 
hour Lee clung tenaciously to his lines to give the Con- 
federate Government time to withdraw from Richmond. 
Nothing is more characteristic of him than the courtesy 
with which he closes this last despatch to the President 



544 ROBERT E. LEE 

of the Confederacy, at the very moment when the over- 
whelming forces of the enemy were sweeping over his 
last lines of defence. 

It is the same spirit which animated him when, at 
Appomattox, a week later, as he surrendered to Grant, 
he attired himself as if he were to review his troops. 

His letters show his entire appreciation of the diffi- 
culty and peril of his situation; but there is not a trace 
of dismay in all his writing. Never more than now, 
when he made his last move in the great game of war, 
did the mens cequa in arduis, that mark of noble minds, 
which ever distinguished him, shine forth in him. 

His letter to his wife, on the eve of the movement 
which was to prove the closing act in the great drama of 
the war, reflects his serenity amid the rising difficulties 
which were soon to engulf him. He thanks her for 
the socks she had knitted for his barefooted and suffer- 
ing men, encloses for her a life of General Scott, for 
whom he had a word of old-time affection and esteem, 
and commends her to God. 

That night he executed successfully the difficult 
movement to which he referred and withdrew his 
famished troops from their long-held and historic en- 
trenchments.^ 

' "The Siege of Petersburg," Capt. W. Gordon McCabe. "Memorial 
Volume of Army of Northern Virginia." 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 

By nightfall Lee knew that he could no longer remain 
on the James for another day, and he devoted all his 
energies to extricating his army. At eight o'clock he 
began to withdraw from the trenches, and it was late in 
the night before the last of his infantry moved like 
shadows through the darkness from the trenches in 
which valor had made its long and desperate stand 
against the massed forces of the new era. As he was 
now hemmed in in a great semicircle, with Grant's 
army resting on the Appomattox both above and below 
him, it was necessary to cross the Appomattox to the 
northward, and, passing up the left bank beyond 
Grant's army, recross the Appomattox to march south- 
ward. It must have been after the letter of the 2d was 
despatched that General Lee issued his final orders for 
the retreat which was to commence at dark. The artil- 
lery was to be withdrawn first, then the infantry. The 
wagon-trains were to follow parallel roads to avoid im- 
peding the troops. Having withdrawn his troops on the 
south side from the lines, he crossed the Appomattox in 
the darkness by the pontoon bridge and the Pocahontas 
and railway bridges. Longstreet crossed first with 
Field's Division, Heth's and Wilcox's Divisions of Hill's 
Corps, and turned up the river. ''Bevil's Bridge," 

545 



546 ROBERT E. LEE 

which General Lee mentions in his last letter to Mr. 
Davis, was "out of order/' but at Goode's Bridge a 
pontoon was laid and the army recrossed here to the 
south bank. Next to Longstreet, who moved by the 
river road, was Gordon, who followed what was known 
as the Hickory Road, and next to him came IMahone's 
Division, which passed through Chesterfield Court 
House. 

So close were the lines of the two armies that Ewell, 
who commanded the troops to the north of the James, 
was unable to withdraw until after the moon went down. 
The wagon-trains on the north side of the James were 
sent up in the afternoon of the 2d to cross at Richmond, 
and General G. W. C. Lee, at Chaffin's Bluff, crossed the 
James at Wilton's Bridge, while Kershaw, with Gary's 
Cavalry Brigade, dismounted, crossed at Richmond, 
uniting on the night of the 3d near Tomahawk Church. 
This column was headed for the railroad bridge at 
Mattoax Station, on the Richmond and Danville Rail- 
road, which had been repaired for the passage of ar- 
tillery and troops. 

The Appomattox was reached and crossed on the 
night of the 4th, and the following day the column, 
which was joined by the naval battalion under Com- 
modore Tucker and the artillery battalion from Hew- 
lett's Bluff, moved to the southward to join the rest of 
Lee's army. 

The withdrawal of his army from the immediate con- 
tact in which it lay along its whole line with Grant's 
great arm}-, with every sense quickened and every 
nerve strained tense to prevent it, was one of the most 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 547 

skilful movements of Lee's career. On the morning 
of the 3d of April he had crossed and recrossed the Ap- 
pomattox with the troops from Petersburg, and having 
been joined by the other troops, was headed for Amelia 
Court House, on the Danville Railway, where he had, 
as stated, ordered supplies to be forwarded from Lynch- 
burg. Everything appeared propitious for the success 
of the movement, for the troops from the north side of 
the James followed the next day and reached him duly. 
But again, by one of the strange fatalities which so often 
appeared to frustrate the best-laid plans of the Con- 
federate leaders, an unkind fate prevented his success. 
Wlien he arrived at Amelia Court House, where he 
should have found his supplies, it was found that the 
supply train which he had ordered had, indeed, been 
sent, but by some curious and inexplicable misadvent- 
ure had been ordered away, and had left hours before. 
Even if his men, inured to hunger, could stagger on 
without food, it was imperatively necessary to get feed 
for his horses, and a day was spent in scouring the al- 
ready well-swept region to find forage and food, a day 
which under propitious circumstances should have 
placed him well beyond the power of Grant to overtake 
him with sufficient force to hold him. But not less fate- 
ful than this was the curious fact that for a third time 
Lee's complete plan had fallen in the hands of his oppo- 
nent and had disclosed to him full information as to his 
movements. As on the upper Rappahannock, in the 
summer of 1862, Pope accidentally received information 
of his plan to cut him off from his communications, and, 
before Sharpsburg, McClellan, through an accident, got 



548 ROBERT E. LEE 

a copy of his plans which led to his advance against 
him in the South Mountains, so now Grant by a simi- 
lar fortune came into possession of Lee's entire plan 
of retreat on Danville. It is stated on the authority 
of General G. W. C. Lee that on the morning of the 
3d, when the Federal troops took possession of Rich- 
mond, there was found in some place a letter from Lee 
which gave his entire route and plan of retreat. This 
despatch was promptly transmitted to General Grant, 
and enabled him to counter every move that Lee made 
and eventually overhaul and surround him with his 
overwhelming force.^ General G. W. C. Lee's account 
of it is as follows : 

After I was taken prisoner at Sailor's Creek, with 
the greater part of the commands of General Ewell 
and General Dick Anderson, and was on my way to 
Petersburg with the officers of the three commands, we 
met the United States engineer brigade under command 
of General Benham, whom I knew prior to the break- 
ing out of the war as one of the captains of my own 
corps— the engineers. 

He did not apparently recognize me, and I did not 
make myself known to him; but he began talking to 
General Ewell, in a loud tone of voice which could be 
distinctly heard by all around. 

I heard General Benham say, among other things, 
that ''General Weitzel had found, soon after his en- 
trance into Richmond, a letter from General Lee, giv- 
ing the condition of the Army of Northern Virginia 
and what he proposed to do should it become necessary 
to withdraw from the lines before Richmond and Peters- 

' Mrs. Davis's "Memoir of Jefferson Davis," II, p. 595; also "A Sol- 
dier's Recollections," by Dr. R. H. McKim, pp. 265-267. 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 549 

burg, and that the letter was immediately sent to 
General Grant. In answer to some doubt expressed 
by General Ewell or some one else, General Benham 
replied, ''Oh, there is no doubt about the letter, for I 
saw it myself." 

I received the impression at the time, or afterward, 
that this letter was a confidential communication to 
the Secretary of War in answer to a resolution of the 
Confederate Congress asking for information in 1865. 
When I mentioned this statement of General Benham 
to General Lee, some time afterward, the latter said, 
"This accounts for the energy of the enemy's pursuit. 
The first day after we left the lines he seemed to be 
entirely at sea with regard to our movements; after 
that, though I never worked so hard in my life to with- 
draw our army in safety, he displayed more energy, 
skill, and judgment in his movements than I ever 
knew him to display before." 

G. W. C. Lee. 

[A true copy.] 

It was not until about three o'clock in the morning 
of the 3d of April that Grant discovered that Lee had 
slipped away from his front. There were two routes by 
which Lee's design of joining Johnston might possibly 
be accomplished: one, the more direct route, by way 
of the Richmond and Danville Railroad, the other by 
way of Lynchburg. Grant took as efficient means as 
possible to provide for both contingencies; but which 
route Lee would follow would have been a mere con- 
jecture unless Grant had received the intelligence that 
he had selected Amelia Court House as his first objec- 
tive point. 

Thus, the letter stating that Lee would march on 



550 ROBERT E. LEE 

Amelia Court House, where he expected to receive sup- 
plies, gave Grant precisely the information he needed 
and enabled him to concentrate all of his energies to 
seize this point and cut Lee off from the direct route 
to Danville. Leaving to subordinates the entry into 
Richmond, the aspiration and destruction of so many 
hopes, he with characteristic directness applied him- 
self to the work of capturing Lee's force. After a 
brief interview with Lincoln in Petersburg early in 
the morning, he proceeded sturdily with the work in 
hand. Sheridan with the Fifth Corps was directed 
at daylight to push forward to the westward and, if 
possible, strike the Danville Railroad between the Ap- 
pomattox and its point of juncture with the Lynch- 
burg Railroad at Burkeville, some thirty miles to the 
south-west ; while General Meade with the Sixth Corps 
was to follow Sheridan closely and march on Amelia 
Court House, and General Ord with the Twenty-fourth 
Corps and Birney's colored troops and the Ninth Corps 
was to move directly on Burkeville Junction, along the 
line of the South-side Railroad. 

Longstreet with the head of Lee's column reached 
Amelia Court House on the afternoon of the 4th of 
April. Gordon was but four or five miles behind. Ma- 
hone's ''fine division" was ten or twelve miles away. 
Anderson, with Fitz Lee guarding his rear, was at Deep 
Creek, some ten miles distant, where after a sharp en- 
gagement between Custer and Fitz Lee at Nimosine 
Church, to the eastward, Fitz Lee made a stand "in a 
strong defensive position," with Wise's and Hunton's 
Brigades in support, and though sharply attacked, held 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 551 

back Merritt and gave Anderson time to march on to 
Amelia, which he reached next morning, the 5th. The 
last of Lee's troops, Swell's force from the lines beyond 
the James, including the naval battalion, arrived about 
noon. 

Mahone's Division was now assigned to Longstreet, 
while Anderson retained Bushrod Johnson's Division 
and what remained of Pickett's Division. The naval 
battalion remained with G. W. C. Lee's Division. 

Sheridan's advance guard did not strike the Rich- 
mond and Danville Railway on the 4th until the late 
afternoon, when Griffin reached the line at Jetersville 
and Crook struck it at a point some miles south of 
Jetersville, toward Burkeville Junction. Here Sheridan 
learned of Lee's presence at Amelia Court House, eight 
miles away. 

The Fifth Corps entrenched to await reinforcements, 
while Mackensie of the Twenty-fifth Corps advanced 
his cavalry to within four miles of the Court House. 

The Second and Sixth Corps, having to give way to 
the cavalry, did not reach Deep Run until night, and 
the first of them did not reach Jetersville till in mid- 
afternoon of the 5th, while the Sixth was yet later. 

Had Lee been able to procure rations at Amelia as 
he had expected, he might have brushed aside the 
cavalry force which Sheridan interposed between him 
and Burkeville and have continued his march to Dan- 
ville, with the Danville Railroad to keep him sup- 
plied, and thus, probably, have escaped. As it was, he 
marched on the 5th straight for Danville, certain that 
he could sweep Sheridan from his path. Precious 



552 ROBERT E. LEE 

hours, however, had been lost and Sheridan had now 
been reinforced. Learning from his cavahy (W. H. F. 
Lee's) division that "Sheridan had been heavily rein- 
forced," he countermarched a short distance and 
turned westward on the road to Farmville, by way of 
Amelia Springs, Deatonsville, and Rice's Station. 

With this in view Lee, selecting a few of the best- 
equipped battalions of artillery to accompany the 
troops, had sent the rest of his artillery (under General 
Lindsay Walker) toward Lynchburg by a road lying 
to the north-west of that which the infantry followed, 
and his wagon-train moved on his right flank by a road 
yet nearer the Appomattox. The infantry and cavalry 
thus protected the artillery and wagon-trains. That 
afternoon, however. Crook's cavalry, scouting toward 
the Appomattox to ascertain Lee's lines of march, 
came on and destroyed one of these wagon-trains. It 
is said that General Lee's head-quarters wagon with 
most of his papers was among those thus destroyed. 

General Lee, himself, stated, however, that all his 
'^records, reports, returns, etc., with the head-quarters 
of the army were needlessly destroyed by the clerks 
having them in charge on the retreat from Petersburg, 
and such as had been forwarded to the War Depart- 
ment in Richmond were either destroyed in the con- 
flagration or captured at the South in the attempt 
to save them." ^ General Fitzhugh Lee's head-quar- 
ters wagon was burned, which probably gave rise to the 
report that General Lee's wagon had been destroyed. 

'Letter to W. B. Reid, of Pliiladclphia, Pa., in " Recollections and 
Letters of General Lee," by R. E. Lee, p. 219. 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 553 

Lee, having turned toward Lynchburg, marched all 
the night of the 5th, hoping to get beyond the possi- 
bility of being overtaken, and by morning had passed 
beyond Grant's left on the Danville Road, where he 
had been disposing his advanced corps to attack him. 
Longstreet, who was in front, had by sunrise reached 
Rice's Station, on the Lynchburg Road, where he was 
soon joined by General Lee, and later by Fitz Lee's 
Cavalry from Amelia Springs, while Anderson, Ewell, 
and Gordon were following in the order named. Gen- 
eral Meade, who had been marching on Amelia Court 
House, finding that Lee had passed him, turned the 
Army of the Potomac about and started westward in 
pursuit, heading the Second Corps, with the Sixth fol- 
lowing it, for the cross-roads at Deatonsville, the Fifth 
Corps, by the road for Paineville, on its right. 

Although Lee had again passed beyond Grant, he 
could not keep ahead of him, for his army was now in a 
state of complete exhaustion, exhaustion of everything 
save the spirit of fight. This they retained in full 
measure, as they were ready to show on every occasion 
which presented itself. The attack on Petersburg be- 
gan on the night of the 1st. It was now the 6th, and 
there had not been an hour's cessation of the struggle. 
With frames enfeebled by the long strain of the winter, 
in constant battle-line in the trenches without adequate 
food or shelter, they had now been fighting or march- 
ing through bottomless mud for five days without food 
save what could be secured by foraging in the naked 
region through which they passed. 

On the road to Deatonsville, beyond Flat Creek, 



554 ROBERT E. LEE 

Gordon, who was covering Lee's rear, found himself 
harassed by a pursuing force which proved to be the 
Sixth Corps, and all day this gallant command fought 
as it marched to hold back the pursuers and give Lee 
time to save the army. Every defensive position in the 
broken country was seized and held until it was carried 
by assault, when they would fall back only to repeat 
the manoeuvre at the next opportunity. But the losses 
were heavy and the strain on the men disheartening. 

About four miles west of the cross-roads at Deatons- 
ville a stream known as "Sailor's Creek" runs north- 
ward through a little valley to the Appomattox, and on 
the higher land on the east side above the valley the 
road from Deatonsville to Rice's Station and Farmville 
divides, one fork running northward above the valley, 
the other keeping on west across the creek to Rice's 
Station. Here Anderson formed line of battle, cover- 
ing the cross-roads for which Sheridan, with tireless 
energy, was pushing with a view to cutting off the 
trains which moved on Lee's right. Crook attacked 
him here about noon, hoping to break through and 
strike the trains, but was driven back, and here later 
Merritt came up and with Crook made another as- 
sault, only to be again beaten off by Anderson, who was 
now reinforced by the advance troops of Ewell. Every 
move was now in the face of the enemy, nnd it was 
necessary to cover and protect the baggago trains an 
the right, so that the Confederate forces wcic disas- 
trously impeded. The men were exhausted, and many 
were unable, from want of food and sleep, to stand on 
their feet. Gordon, guarding the rear, arrived at the 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 555 

fork above Sailor's Creek a little later, and Anderson, 
relieved of the guard of the cross-roads, continued his 
march and, followed by Ewell, crossed the creek by the 
direct road to Rice's Station, while Gordon, who stood 
guard during the passage of the trains, after they had 
crossed moved along the eastern fork of the road to 
cross the creek at Perkinson's mill, a few miles lower 
down Sailor's Creek, on the road to Farmville by 
High Bridge, the point at which the Lynchburg Rail- 
way crossed the Appomattox and where there was 
a wagon bridge. His pursuit was taken up by the 
Second Corps, while Sheridan followed the troops on 
the Rice's Station Road, with the Sixth Corps behind 
him. Ewell, following Anderson, having crossed the 
creek on the direct road to Rice's Station, was hotly 
pursued by the Sixth Corps and Sheridan's cavalry, and 
formed on a crest on the west side to cover the road, 
Kershaw on his right, G. W. C. Lee on his left, the navy 
battalion in reserve. 

Sheridan, having pushed across the creek and passed 
beyond the Confederates, posted his cavalry across the 
road to Rice's Station, in front of Anderson, while 
Wright's corps (the Sixth) formed line of battle across 
the creek and opened with artillery on Ewell, on the 
crest on the opposite side. The latter had only some 
3,000 men and no artillery and was in the act of pre- 
paring to unite with Anderson to dislodge the cavalry 
from his front when the Sixth Corps came upon them. 
Seymour's and Wlieaton's divisions attacked them in 
flank, Getty in front, with the artillery sweeping them 
with a deadly fire, and Sheridan's dismounted cavalry 



556 ROBERT E. LE:E 

in their rear. It was one of the most furious fights of 
the war, finally becoming a hand-to-hand conflict in 
which the Confederates, though surrounded and with- 
out artillery, fought with desperation; but the issue 
could not be doubtful, and finally, surrounded on all 
sides by overwhelming numbers and their ranks deci- 
mated by the fire from every direction, almost the whole 
of Ewell's command surrendered, as did nearly half of 
Anderson's command. The rest, some 250 of Ker- 
shaw's Division, who promptly formed a battalion, and 
about half of Anderson's men, made their way to Rice's 
Station, having been met on the road by Mahone's 
Division, which Longstreet sent back to their assistance. 
The losses comprised, of Ewell's command, some 3,000 
men, and of Anderson's command, nearly as many 
more, and included six generals captured, viz.. Gen- 
erals Ewell, Kershaw, Custis Lee, Dubose, Hunton, and 
Corse.* 

That night (the 6th) Lee moved on to Farmville 
with the force that remained to him — Longstreet 's and 
Gordon's commands, with the remnant of Ewell's — 
Fitz Lee's Cavalry bringing up the rear. Longstreet 
and Fitz Lee crossed the Appomattox at Farmville, 
Gordon and Mahone at High Bridge, four or five miles 
below, and marched thence by the railroad line to the 
town, having only partially destroj^d the railroad 
bridge before the enemy came up. On the way to the 
river the}^ met a small force of cavalry under Colonel 
Washburne and two small regiments of infantry under 

• General E. P. Alexander states the losses at 8,000. ("Memoirs," 
p. 597.) 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 557 

General Theodore Read, who had been sent forward by 
Ord to burn the bridges over the Appomattox and were 
now returning, having been recalled. The small force 
made a gallant stand to hold back the Confederates, 
but were soon destroyed, both of the officers named 
having been killed. But Grant states that their self- 
devotion enabled him to overtake Lee's army. On the 
Confederate side General Bearing, Colonel Boston, and 
Major Thompson were among the killed. 

At Farmville rations were found by Lee for the 
first time since leaving Petersburg, but not all of the 
troops were served even then, so close on them pushed 
Sheridan. 

Next morning Lee, having destroyed the bridges at 
Farmville, moved on toward Appomattox on the road 
to Lynchburg, leaving Grant's main army on the south 
side of the river, which was nearly unfordable for in- 
fantry. Humphreys with the Second Corps, however, 
was on the north side, having crossed behind Gordon 
at High Bridge, lower down the river. Gregg's cavalry 
was with him, while Crook, who had forded the river 
at Farmville, was now also on the north side. 

Lee was moving toward Lynchburg by the Stage 
and Plank Roads, when the rear-guard skirmishing, 
which had been constant all the while, increased about 
midday, revealing a serious attack. Gordon's Corps, 
which was first assaulted by Barlow, lost some wagons, 
but gave a good account of itself, driving back the pur- 
suing force. By one o'clock Lee found himself pressed 
by so large a force that he was forced to form a line of 
battle to repel the attack, which was successfully done. 



558 ROBERT E. LEE 

It was the Second Corps which had come up and was 
endeavoring to hold him until the Twenty-fourth and 
Sixth Corps could cross the river and attack their 
redoubtable foe from toward Lynchburg. Gregg's Bri- 
gade coming up, was charged by Munford and Rosser, 
and Gregg himself was captured, on which the division 
was withdrawn. Following Humphreys' lucid account, 
''he [Miles] suddenly came in contact with the enemy, 
who opened on him with Poague's sixteen guns; dis- 
positions were at once made for attack, and a heavy 
skirmish line was pressed close up against the enemy, 
to develop his position. It was soon found from the 
prisoners taken that Lee's whole army was present in 
a strong position covering the Stage and Plank Roads 
to Lynchburg, which had been entrenched sufficiently 
for cover and had artillery in place. It was on the 
crest of a long slope of open ground. Fitz Lee's Cav- 
alry was covering their rear toward Farmville, sup- 
ported by Heth's Infantry. A heavy skirmish line was 
pressed against the enemy and an attack threatened 
with the two divisions, both of which were now up, and 
an unsuccessful attempt was made to take them in 
flank. Barlow was now sent for and General Meade 
informed that Lee's whole remaining force, probably 
about 18,000 infantry, had been come up with, and 
suggesting that a corps should- attack Lee from the 
direction of Farmville at the same time that the Second 
Corps attacked from the opposite direction. Upon this 
General Meade sent directions for General Gibbon with 
the Twenty-fourth Corps and General Wright with the 
Sixth Corps, both of which were then near Farmville, 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 559 

to cross the river there and attack jointly with the 
Second Corps." ^ 

It was plain now to many of the officers that the sit- 
uation of the remnant that remained of the army was 
desperate, and while at Farmville a number of the su- 
perior officers got together and held a conference at 
which it was decided that the cause had become so 
hopeless that they deemed it wrong to continue the 
killing of men of both sides and that they should not 
leave on Lee "the entire trial of initiating the idea of 
terms with the enemy." General Gordon communi- 
cated the sense of this conference to General Lee's 
chief of artillery, General William N. Pendleton, who 
had been at West Point with Lee and stood very close 
to him, and General Pendleton was requested to con- 
sult General Longstreet, and then, if he agreed, to con- 
vey their views to General Lee. "At first," says Gen- 
eral Pendleton, "General Longstreet dissented, but, on 
second thought, preferred that himself should be rep- 
resented with the rest." General Pendleton, there- 
fore, sought Lee, who was found "lying alone, resting 
at the base of a large pine tree." Lee listened quietly, 
"and then courteously expressing thanks for the con- 
siderations of his subordinates in desiring to relieve 
him in part of existing burdens," said that he trusted it 
had not come to that ; that they certainly had too many 
brave men to think of laying down their arms. "They 
still fight with great spirit," he added, "whereas the 
enemy does not. And besides, if I were to intimate to 
General Grant that I would listen to terms, he would 

1 » "Virginia Campaign of 1864-65," pp. 388, 399. 



560 ROBERT E. LEE 

at once regard it as such an evidence of weakness that 
he would demand unconditional surrender, and sooner 
than that I am resolved to die. Indeed, we must all 
determine to die at our posts." 

Pendleton's reply to him was that they were per- 
fectly willing that he should decide the question, and 
that every man would no doubt cheerfully meet death 
with him in discharge of duty.^ 

Grant, however, knew as well as Lee's generals to 
what desperate straits the retreating Confederates were 
reduced. He knew, further, that while their cause was 
hopeless, they "still fought with spirit," and he knew 
that his pursuing force was rapidly getting beyond the 
reach of supplies. He had no desire to insist on hard 
terms. What he wished for was peace through the 
ending of the war. Accordingly, within twenty-four 
hours of the time when Lee stated to his chief of ar- 
tillery his conviction that a request to Grant for terms 
would bring the same reply which had been given by 
him at Fort Donelson three years before. Grant him- 
self made overtures to him that he should surrender 
the remnant of his army on honorable terms. 

General Grant states that having heard at Farmville 
of a remark of General E well's as to the condition of 
Lee's army, and having received from Sheridan a letter 
saying that he was on the way to Appomattox Station 
to cut off some supply trains which were there awaiting 
Lee's arrival, the two facts led him to open negotia- 
tions with Lee for his surrender. 

• "Life of William N. Pendleton," by S. P. Lee, p. 402. Fitzhugh 
Lee's "Life of Lee," p. 392. 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 561 

Some historians have undertaken to assert that 'Hhe 
conditions were not unequal : that Lee might have with- 
drawn his army and effected a junction with Johnston, 
but was outgeneralled by Grant." To support this 
claim they assign to Lee the highest number of men 
that by any computation could possibly be assigned to 
him and take no account of the absent and the disabled. 

The latest of these historians, and among the most 
broad-minded of the class, has assigned to Lee at the 
beginning of his retreat 49,000 men, against Grant's 
113,000, and declares that with 'Hhe game escape or 
surrender the conditions were not unequal, and Lee was 
simply outgeneralled." ^ 

Conditions can scarcely be said to have been not un- 
equal, when Grant, as commander of all the Northern 
armies, had nearly 1,000,000 men under his command, 
and Lee, as commander of the Southern armies, had 
less than 200,000 under his command. If Lee was 
simply outgeneralled some change must have taken 
place in the two men, since, with an army never 
more than 10,000 in excess of the numbers assigned 
him here,^ Lee fought through the month of May, 
1864, Grant's army of 140,000, defeated him in battle 
after battle from the Wilderness to Petersburg, caused 
him losses of 124,000 men, and must have destroyed 
him but for his inexhaustible resources of men and 
munition. 

But, by the records, the statement quoted is errone- 
ous, and, laying aside the imperfect records of the Con- 

> Rhodes's "History," vol. V. 

* In fact, the 49,000 was before the great losses at the end of February. 



562 ROBERT E. LEE 

federate army, the evidence is beyond question that 
when Lee began his retreat he had only about half of 
the number of men assigned to him by these historians. 
Colonel Walter H. Taylor, of his staff, estimates that 
Lee had, on March 31, 33,000 muskets, and General Lee 
told General Fitz Lee that he had at that time 35,000 
men; ''but after Five Forks and in the encounters of 
March 31, April 1 and 2 he had only 20,000 muskets 
available, and of all arms not over 25,000 when he be- 
gan the retreat that terminated at Appomattox Court 
House." ^ 

Wliatever may be the numbers shown on records 
scatteringly made, and, at best, most imperfect, Lee's 
statement for those who know him settles the question. 

But even these men were little more than spectres. 
Ill-fed, ill-clad, kept for ten months on a constant strain 
in the face of an army that might at any time mass 
treble their number on either flank; stretched in a 
line thirty-five miles in length, every point of which 
it was vital to hold; wasted by hunger, disease, and 
cold, these veterans made no plea of being outnum- 
bered. Under Lee they answered every demand and 
held Grant at bay until not only subsistence, but hope 
of subsistence, perished. 

Even at the last, when Lee recrossed the Appomattox 
to the south side beyond Grant's lines and directed his 
course for Amelia Court House, to which point he had 
ordered provisions to be sent to meet him, had his orders 
been obeyed, it is the opinion of many competent 
critics that he might have eluded Grant's pursuit, 

» Fitzhugh Lee's "Life of Lee," p. 373. 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 563 

prompt and efficient as it was. But no provisions were 
there. Some one had blundered. It appears that a 
provision train had arrived on April 1, but had been 
fatuously ordered to Richmond. However it was, a 
day was lost in the effort to obtain subsistence from the 
depleted countryside for his famished army, men and 
horses, and in the interval Grant was enabled to come 
up, and thenceforth, in the light of subsequent events, 
further retreat was unavailing. From this moment 
it was merely a question of whether the endurance of 
his starving force would hold out to march and fight 
until he had outstripped Grant with his preponderant 
force possessed of ample subsistence and baggage trains. 
So great was the confidence of his men in Lee that 
many of them believed that the retreat was a move- 
ment designed by him to draw Grant from his base 
of supplies with a view to turning on him and destroy- 
ing him. 

Every step was in face of the enemy massing in 
force under the able direction of men like Meade, Ord, 
and Sheridan. The fighting was almost hourly, and, 
while fortune varied, the balance of success was largely 
with the pursuing forces. 

So denuded was the country of all that would sus- 
tain life, that men thought themselves well off when 
a corn-house was found with grain yet left in it and 
corn was distributed to them to be parched. Even 
this was not always to be had, and as corn was necessary 
for the artillery horses, guards were posted where they 
fed to prevent the men from taking it from the horses. 
They were reduced to the necessity of raking up the 



5G4 ROBERT E. LEE 

scattered grains from the ground where the horses had 
been fed and even to picking the grains from the drop- 
pings of the horses. Many of the men became too 
weak to carry their muskets. Small wonder that they 
dropped out of the ranks by hundreds! Yet still the 
remainder kept on, with unwavering courage, unwa- 
vering devotion, and unwavering faith in their com- 
mander. 

In their rags and tatters, ill-clad, ill-shod, ill-fed, ill- 
armed, and, whenever armed, armed for the most part 
with the weapons they had captured from brave foes 
on hard-fought battle-fields, they were the abiding ex- 
pression of Southern valor and fortitude; the flower 
of Southern manhood; the pick of every class; the 
crystallized residue of the Army of Northern Virginia, 
with which Lee had achieved his fame and on which to 
future ages shall rest the fame of the South. 

Like a wounded lion that spent and wasted army 
dragged itself across the desolated land, now turning 
at bay and at every turn leaving its deep mark on its 
pursuers, now retreating again without haste or fear, 
and simply in obedience to the instinct of self-preser- 
vation, and, at the last, sinking with exhaustion, with 
crest unlowered, heart undaunted, and face steadfastly 
set to the foe. As we contemplate their constancy we 
can but recall Pericles' words over the Athenian dead 
in the Peloponnesian war: ''Thus choosing to die re- 
sisting rather than to live submitting, they fled only 
from dishonor, but met danger face to face, and after 
one brief moment, while at the sunmiit of their fortune, 
escaped, not from their fear, but from their glory." 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 565 

The spring rains had made the roads so deep in that 
region of deep roads as to be wellnigh impassable to 
the well-equipped troops of Grant, and operations, just 
before the evacuation of Richmond, had once to be sus- 
pended. To Lee's ill-fed teams they became at times 
actually impassable, and batteries had to be aban- 
doned because the exhausted horses could not longer 
pull the guns. In some cases the artillerymen armed 
themselves with muskets picked up on the march 
and were formed into infantry companies. But in face 
of Grant's capital generalship, using his great army 
to best advantage, attacking and capturing bodies of 
troops da,y after day, the end could no longer be 
doubtful. 

Long before, in writing to one of his brothers from 
Mexico, where he contributed so much to the brilHant 
victories which ended in the capture of the Mexican 
capital, Lee had said: "We have the right, by the laws 
of war, of dictating the terms of peace and requiring 
indemnity for our losses and expenses. Rather than 
forego that right, except through a spirit of magna- 
nimity for a crushed foe, I would fight them ten years, 
but I would be generous in exercising it." ^ 

Would it not be likely that this letter should recur 
to him in this crisis of his life? 

In another letter he says, in referring to the terms of 
peace: "These are certainly not hard terms for Mexico, 
considering how the fortune of war has been against 
her. For myself, I would not exact more than I would 

* Letter to his brother, Sidney Smith Lee, March 4, 1848, cited in 
Jones's "Life and Letters of Lee," p. 57. 



566 ROBERT E. LEE 

have taken before the commencement of hostihties, 
as I should wish nothing but what was just." * 

Tlie continuous fighting held Lee back and enabled 
Sheridan, followed by Ord, marching by a parallel 
route, to reach Appomattox Station before him and 
bar his further progress. 

This was the end. The final scene has been depicted 
so often that there is no need to repeat it here for in- 
formation, and yet the story of Lee and of Grant is not 
complete without it. In the two weeks between Lee's 
desperate effort to break Grant's right and their per- 
sonal meeting at Appomattox, where Lee's surrender 
took place, both Lee and Grant reached their zenith. 
In Lee every high quality which had enabled him to 
carry the Confederacy on his shoulders for more than 
two years shone forth. In Grant noble and hitherto 
unsuspected qualities discovered themselves. At the 
end he stood forth the Grant of the monuments. If 
magnanimity be a test, then Americans may well be 
proud of the victor at Appomattox; if dignity be a test, 
then Americans may well be proud of the vanquished 
at Appomattox. History there repeated itself, so that 
it may be truly said, as was said of Caractacus in the 
triumphal train of Vespasian, that the dignity of the 
conquered eclipsed the glory of the conqueror. 

In the late afternoon of the 7th of April, General 
Grant penned his first letter to General Lee, asking the 
surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. This 

* Letter cited in Jones's "Lee," p. 54. John Russell Young once told 
the writer that Grant stated to him that he could not have kept up his 
pursuit a half day longer. 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 567 

letter was sent by his adjutant-general, General Seth 
Williams, to General Humphreys, commanding the 
Second Corps, who was on the front line in immediate 
touch with the Confederate rear, and General Hum- 
phreys was requested to have it delivered to General 
Lee. He states that he ''sent it at once through his 
picket line, at the same time authorizing a truce for an 
hour at that point," in accordance with a request that 
had been made him by the Confederates to enable 
them to gather up their wounded that were lying be- 
tween the lines. This letter was received by Lee about 
half-past eight in the evening. General Lee's answer 
was sent back to him within an hour, and, having been 
delivered to General Williams, was taken at once to 
General Grant, who was at Farmville. 

The two letters containing Grant's demand and Lee's 
response are as follows: 

April 7, 1865. 

General: The result of the last week must convince 
you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the 
part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. 
I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift 
from myself the responsibility of any further effusion 
of blood by asking of you the surrender of that portion 
of the Confederate States army known as the Army of 
Northern Virginia. 

U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-General. 

General R. E. Lee. 

April 7, 1865. 
General: I have received your note of this date. 
Though not entertaining the opinion you express on 
the hojoelessness of further resistance on the part of the 



568 ROBERT E. LEE 

Army of Northern Virginia, I reciprocate your desire 
to avoid useless effusion of blood, and, therefore, before 
considering your proposition, ask the terms you will 
offer on condition of its surrender. 

R. E. Lee, General. 
Lieutenant-General U. S. Grant. 

General Grant states that Lee's reply was not satis- 
factory, but he deemed that it required a further com- 
munication, and the following morning he sent his 
second letter to General Humphreys, who was in ad- 
vance in the pursuit, to be forwarded through the lines 
to General Lee. Lee received this letter only in time 
to despatch his reply in the later afternoon, and it did 
not reach Grant until about midnight, when he had 
halted for the night at Curdsville, some ten miles in 
Lee's rear. These letters run as follows: 

April 8, 1865. 

General: Your note of last evening in reply to mine 
of same date, asking the condition on which I will 
accept the surrender of the Ai-my of Northern Virginia, 
is just received. In reply, I would say that peace being 
my great desire, there is but one condition I would in- 
sist upon, namely, that the men and officers surrendered 
shall be disqualified for taking up arms again against 
the Government of the United States until properly 
exchanged. I will meet you, or will designate officers 
to meet any officers you may name for the same pur- 
pose, at any point agreeable to you, for the purpose of 
arranging definitely the terms upon which the surrender 
of the Army of Northern Virginia will be received. 
U. S. Grant, Lieuienant-General. 

General R. E. Lee. 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 569 

April 8, 1865. 

General: I received at a late hour your note of to-day. 
In mine of yesterday I did not intend to propose the 
surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, but to ask 
the terms of your proposition. To be frank, I do not 
think the emergency has arisen to call for the surrender 
of this army, but as the restoration of peace should be 
the sole object of all, I desire to know whether your pro- 
posals would lead to that end. I cannot, therefore, 
meet you with a view to surrender the Army of Northern 
Virginia, but as far as your proposal may affect the 
Confederate States forces under my command, and 
tend to the restoration of peace, I should be pleased 
to meet you at 10 a. m. to-morrow on the old Stage Road 
to Richmond, between the picket lines of the two armies. 

R. E. Lee, General. 

Lieutenant-General U. S. Grant. 

Grant, meanwhile, had given orders to Humphreys 
to continue the pursuit ; but Humphreys, after having 
resumed the march, "finding his men dropping out of 
the ranks from exhaustion, owing to want of food and 
to fatigue, halted the head of his column at midnight, 
after a march of twenty-six miles," about three miles 
in the rear of Longst reefs troops. 

A proposal was made to Lee by General E. P. Alex- 
ander that the army should scatter and make its way 
to Johnston by various routes. This plan Lee promptly 
disposed of. He declared that they had no right as 
Christian men to consider only how the surrender 
would affect them — they must consider its effect on 
the country as a whole, and, after explaining his views 
of the demoralizing effect of such a course, he added 



570 ROBERT E. LEE 

that he would go to General Grant and surrender him- 
self, though he went alone, and take the consequences 
of his acts/ 

On the 8th of April orders were issued for a last 
effort. The artillery was directed to be brought up 
during the night and massed with a view to breaking 
through Grant's forming lines, and steps were taken 
to deliver battle once more. All night the men toiled, 
but next morning the officer charged with the task ^ 
notified Gordon that his utmost efforts had been able 
to bring up only two batteries — the rest of the artillery 
had taken another route and could not be reached — 
the horses of the other batteries available were gone; 
the residue of that artillery which had once helped to 
make the artillery duels of Lee and Grant the fiercest 
in the records of war was silenced forever. 

On this small fragment of his once redoubtable ar- 
tillery, and on the remnant of his infantry and cavalry, 
one more call was made by Lee. As the sun rose on 
the morning of the 9th of April, the worn and wasted 
squadrons, with a response as prompt and generous as 
in the best days of his most victorious campaigns, ad- 
vanced to their last charge to drive for the last time 
their foes before them. The first onset was successful. 
Sheridan's cavalry was driven back in confusion and 
the situation was possibly saved only, as the support- 
ing general himself stated, by the timely arrival of 
Ord, the conmiander of the Army of the James, with 



' "Military Memoirs of General E. P. Alexander," p. 605. 
- Colonel Thomas H. Carter, a gallant and efficient soldier and Lee's 
near kinsman. 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 571 

abundant troops to bar the way.* And Gordon sent 
Lee word that he had fought his troops "to a frazzle/' 
and could do nothing more unless heavily supported 
by Longstreet's Corps. "Then," said Lee, "there is 
nothing left for me but to go and see General Grant, 
and I would rather die a thousand deaths." But he 
went, and by this act he saved the South from the hor- 
rors of Jacobinism. 

On the morning of the 9th, General Grant, who was 
still at Curdsville, wrote, and forwarded through Gen- 
eral Humphreys, his third letter to General Lee. It 
is a noble letter: 

April 9, 1865. 

General: Your note of yesterday is received. I have 
no authority to treat on the subject of peace. The meet- 
ing proposed for 10 a. m. to-day could lead to no good. 
I will state, however, general, that I am equally anxious 
for peace with yourself, and the whole North entertains 
the same feeling. The terms upon which peace can be 
had are well understood. 

By the South laying down their arms they will hasten 
that most desirable event, save thousands of human 
lives, and hundreds of millions of property not yet de- 
stroyed. 

Seriously hoping that all our difficulties may be 
settled without the loss of another life, I subscribe 
myself, etc., 

U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-General. 

General R. E. Lee. 

»"Ord left Petersburg with 20,000 troops, all arms; Fifth Corps, 
15,973 (report of March 31, 1865); Sheridan's cavalry, 13,810; to 
which add 1,000 for the Fifth Corps Artillery, makes 50,783." (Fitz- 
hugh Lee's "Life of Lee," p. 388, note.) 



572 ROBERT E. LEE 

This letter was received by General Lee as he was 
on his way toward his rear to meet the appointment he 
had suggested for that day at ten o'clock on the Old 
Stage Road to Richmond, should Grant have seen fit 
to act affirmatively on the suggestion. As soon as he 
had read the letter, Lee dictated a reply to it, Colonel 
Marshall, of his staff, acting as his amanuensis. This 
letter, which was written about nine o'clock in the 
morning, was then despatched by Colonel Whittier 
"with verbal messages to General Grant from General 
Lee expressive of regret at not having met him," and 
ran as follows : 

Ajyril 9, 1865. 

General: I received your note of this morning on the 
picket line, whither I had come to meet you and ascer- 
tain definitely what terms were embraced in your pro- 
posal of yesterday with reference to the surrender of 
this army. I now ask an interview in accordance with 
the offer contained in your letter of yesterday for that 
purpose. 

R. E. Lee, General. 

Lieutenant-General U. S. Grant. 

This letter was delivered by Colonel Whittier to 
General Meade at about ten o'clock, and was forwarded 
by him to General Grant, who had ridden in the direc- 
tion of Appomattox Court House and had taken a cross- 
road for this purpose. Grant was overtaken at a point 
about eight miles from Appomattox Court House, and 
immediately wrote his reply to General Lee. Though 
Lee had declared to General Alexander his conviction 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 573 

that Grant would offer as good terms as he was entitled 
to receive, as he now awaited his reply with Longstreet 
beside him, he, as Alexander says, could not feel con- 
fidence that Grant "might not demand unconditional 
surrender." And as Grant's messenger approached, 
the last thing said was by Longstreet, who knew no 
fear: "General, unless he offers us honorable terms, 
come back and let us fight it out," ^ It was the spirit 
of the South. But Grant was not less noble. He had 
resolved to do all he could to spare a vanquished foe. 
He offered terms not only honorable, but magnanimous. 
His last note was as follows: 

April 9, 1865. 
General R. E. Lee, Commanding C. S. A.: 
. Your note of this date is but this moment (11.50 a. m.) 
received. In consequence of my having passed from 
the Richmond and Lynchburg Road to the Farmville 
and Lynchburg Road, I am, at this writing, about four 
miles west of Walker's Church, and will push forward 
to the front for the purpose of meeting you. 

Notice sent to me on this road where you wish the 
interview to take place will meet me. 

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-General. 

On the receipt of General Grant's last note, which 
was brought to him by Colonel Babcock, of Grant's 
staff. General Lee, accompanied by Colonel Marshall, 
of his staff, Colonel Babcock, and a mounted orderly, 
rode into the little village of Appomattox Court House, 
and, requesting of Mr. McLean, of that place, to be 

' E. P. Alexander's "Memoirs," p. 609. 



574 ROBERT E. LEE 

allowed the use of his sitting-room, awaited General 
Grant's arrival. Here, after a meeting which was so 
pleasant that Grant says he was in danger of forgetting 
the business that had called them together, the terms 
of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia were 
quickly arranged. Grant, taking his seat at a marble- 
topped table in the centre of the room, quickly drafted 
the terms, and upon the paper being handed to Lee, 
who sat at a small table by a window, the latter drafted 
his acceptance of them. They are as follows: 

Appomattox Court House, Va., April 9, 1865. 

General: In accordance with the substance of my 
letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the sur- 
render of the Army of Northern Virginia on the follow- 
ing terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to 
be made in duplicate, one copy to be given to an officer 
to be designated by me, the other to be retained by such 
officer or officers as you may designate. The officers 
to give their individual paroles not to take up arms 
against the Government of the United States until 
properly exchanged, and each company and regimental 
commander sign a like parole for the men of their 
commands. The arms, artillery, and public property 
to be parked and stacked and turned over to the officers 
appointed by me to receive them. This will not em- 
brace the side arms of the officers nor the private 
horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man 
will be allowed to return to his home, not to be dis- 
turbed by United States authority so long as he ob- 
serves his parole and the laws in force where he may 
reside. 

U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-General. . 

General R. E. Lee. 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 575 

Head-quarters Army of Northern Virginia, 

April 9, 1865. 

General: I received your letter of this date, contain- 
ing the terrns of the surrender of the Army of Northern 
Virginia as proposed by you. As they are substan- 
tially the same as those expressed in your letter of the 
8th instant, they are accepted. I will proceed to des- 
ignate the proper officers to carry the stipulation into 
effect. 

R. E. Lee, General. 

Lieutenant-General U. S. Grant. 



The attitude of the commanding generals toward 
each other at the close of the surrender is one on which 
the outside world gazed with astonishment, and to 
which we may all look back with pride. 

General Long in his memoirs of Lee relates an anec- 
dote which casts a pleasant light on the situation. It 
appears that on the afternoon of the day of the sur- 
render, Meade paid a friendly visit to Lee at his head- 
quarters, and in the course of conversation ^'Lee turned 
to Meade, who had been associated with him as his 
officer of engineers of the 'old army,' and said pleas- 
antly: 'Meade, years are telling on you. Your hair 
is getting quite gray.' 'Ah, General Lee,' was Meade's 
prompt reply, 'this is not the work of years. You 
are responsible for my gray hairs.'" 

Lee, after his surrender, asked for 25,000 rations, 
and this is accepted as the number of his army. But 
the actual number of muskets surrendered on the 9th 
of April was by his report less than 9,000. Lee had 
fought his army until it had simply worn away. 



576 ROBERT E. LEE 

Wliatever men Lee had on his rolls, whether 10,000, 
25,000, or 40,000, they were, in their famished and 
spent condition, too few to defeat Grant's ably led 
force, whether that force were 100,000 or 180,000, and 
Lee, acting in accord with the views of his general 
officers who had urged on him this course, was right to 
avail himself of Grant's generous proposal. It is to 
Grant's eternal honor that he offered him such honor- 
able terms for the surrender of what remained of the 
Army of Northern Virginia. A detached portion of the 
cavalry had broken through and started to make its way 
to Johnston, but Lee recalled the officer in command 
and informed him that he was included in his surrender. 

The greatness of the occasion appears to have lifted 
Grant to a higher plane than that of the mere soldier 
from which he had looked apparently unmoved on the 
sacrifice of the thousands of gallant men and officers 
who, from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, had died at 
his bidding, and from which he had refused with cold 
calculation the offers of the South to exchange prisoners 
and had left men to die like sheep in prisons made 
noisome largely by their numbers. 

In the long vigils before Petersburg, faced by a 
brave and steadfast foe, his mind had apparently been 
elevated as it mainly became in the presence of a great 
crisis — as it became years afterward when, clutched 
fast in the grip of his last and conquering foe, he held 
death at bay while he completed the remarkable work 
on which his family were to depend for their support. 
However this was, his generosity justified Lee's dec- 
laration that he would give his army as good terms as 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 577 

it had a right to expect, and his correspondence with 
Lee will bear comparison with that of any victor in 
history/ 

The following day Lee issued his farewell address 
to his army: 

Head-quarters Army of Northern Virginia, 

April 10, 1865. 
After four years of arduous service, marked by un- 
surpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern 
Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming 
numbers and resources. I need not tell the survivors 
of so many hard-fought battles who have remained 
steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this re- 
sult from no distrust of them, but, feeling that valor 
and devotion could accomplish nothing that could com- 
pensate for the loss that would have attended the con- 
tinuation of the contest, I have determined to avoid 

* An incident of the surrender, told by Grant to Dr. Fordyce Barker, 
was related by him to Dr. William M. Polk. Dr. Barker asked Grant 
how he felt when he met Lee at Appomattox. Was he not sensible of 
great elation over his achievement? 

Grant replied that, on the contrary, he was sensible rather of humilia- 
tion. When he found Lee in full-dress uniform, while he himself was in 
a simple fatigue-suit — a private's blouse, with only a general's shoulder- 
straps to denote his rank, and with his boots spattered to their tops — 
he was afraid that Lee might imagine that he intended a discourtesy 
to him because of an incident that had occurred in Mexico. General 
Scott, he said, was exceedingly particular as to all matters of etiquette, 
and had given orders that no oflBcer should appear at head-quarters 
without being in full dress. On some occasion thereafter Grant had 
gone to head-quarters in an ordinary fatigue-uniform, and that not as 
neat, perhaps, as it should have been, and had reported to Lee, who 
was at the time serving on Scott's staff. After the business had been 
transacted, Lee said : " I feel it my duty, Captain, to call your atten- 
tion to General Scott's order that an oflBcer reporting at head-quarters 
should be in full uniform." 

This incident, said the general, suddenly flashed across his mind and 
made him uncomfortable lest General Lee should recall it also and 
imagine that he intended to affront him. 



578 ROBERT E. LEE 

the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have 
endeared them to their countrymen. 

By the terms of the agreement officers and men can 
return to their homes, and remain there until exchanged. 
You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds 
from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, 
and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend 
to you His blessing and protection. 

With an increasing admiration of your constancy 
and devotion to your country, and a grateful remem- 
brance of your kind and generous consideration of my- 
self, I bid you an affectionate farewell. 

R. E. Lee, General. 

On the 12th of April he announced to President Davis 
the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.^ Like 
all of his papers, it is direct and casts a light on his 
character. Moreover, it gives the simplest and most 
authoritative account of the retreat to Appomattox 
that is on record. 

Ten days after Lee's surrender, Sherman, moved 
thereto by a more generous impulse than had hitherto 
appeared to inspire him, and plainly influenced by 
Grant s magnanimity, offered to Johnston term^ not 
more generous but more far-reaching, if possible, than 
Grant had proposed to Lee, and after a brief period of 
negotiation, in which Sherman's far-sighted views were 
scornfully disavowed and rejected by the authorities 
in Washington, just unbridled by the tragic death of 
Lincoln, Johnston surrendered on the same terms that 
Lee had accepted. 

In this convention all the remaining forces of the 

* Report to be found in the Appendix. 



THE RETREAT TO APPOMATTOX 579 

South were included, and, in so far as the South could 
effect it, the war was over. The war, however, prac- 
tically ended when Lee surrendered his army at Appo- 
mattox. 

The highest tribute to this army is the simple fact 
that with its surrender the war was over. The fort- 
unes of the Confederacy had been nailed to its tattered 
standards and with them went down. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

GENERAL LEE AND THE CONFEDERATE 
GOVERNMENT 

The student of the Civil War will be likely to reach the 
conclusion that for at least the last two years of the 
struggle General Robert E. Lee carried the fortunes of 
the Confederacy on his shoulders. 

It will possibly always be a question how far Lee's 
military operations were affected by his relation to the 
Confederate Government, and to what extent he was 
interfered with by the Richmond authorities. That 
he was much hampered by them seems quite certain, 
both from the nature of his subordinate relation to 
Mr. Davis and from the interference which is continu- 
ally disclosed in the correspondence that took place 
between them. 

The great generals of history have almost invariably 
had a free hand in their campaigns and have been able 
to call to their aid all the powers of their government. 
Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal, Cromwell, Frederick, Na- 
poleon were supreme wherever the interests of their 
armies were concerned. Turenne, Eugene, and Wel- 
lington had the fullest and most absolute backing of 
their governments. Moreover, they lived under differ- 
ent conditions from those of our time and subsisted 
their armies on the countries in which they operated. 
Until Grant received command the Union generals were 

580 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 581 

hopelessly interfered with by the Washington govern- 
ment, and it was only when Grant stipulated that he 
should be commander in fact as well as in title that 
success, after long delay, rewarded the Northern arms. 

On the Southern side, though the interference was 
never so flagrant, and though Lee appears to have 
always had the confidence of President Davis, and, 
from the time when he assumed command of the Army 
of Northern Virginia, to have had that of the Confeder- 
ate Government, yet it is a question whether the inter- 
ference, or, what was equally disastrous, the lack of 
prompt, practical, and efficient support on the part of 
the government, was not in the end as fruitful of mis- 
fortune. Colonel Henderson, in his "Life of Stonewall 
Jackson," declares that "a true estimate of Lee's 
genius is impossible, for it can never be known to 
what extent his designs were thwarted by the Con- 
federate Government." 

It may, indeed, be said briefly that a confederated 
government based frankly on the supreme power of 
the civil government over the military is not one under 
which a revolution can be fought out with best results. 
In the constitution of things the Confederate Govern- 
ment of the Southern States was inefficient to carry on 
such a war as that between the States. Each State 
was of equal dignity and authority with the others. 
Each one was of more importance in its own eyes than 
any of her sisters. Most of them were at times seriously, 
if not equally, threatened, and it was quite natural, 
when States' Rights were the corner-stone of the confed- 
eration, that each one should feel that her own interests 



582 ROBERT E. LEE 

were to her paramount to those of her sister States. 
Certainly, this was the case, and at times, particularly 
toward the close of the struggle, more than one of the 
South Atlantic States was in a ferment of opposition to 
the Richmond authorities bordering on secession. 

The Confederate Government, indeed, was founded 
on certain principles of civil equality, which, however 
sound in themselves and making for liberty, yet fur- 
nished but a cumbrous machine with which to carry 
on a war. Theory, extending to dogma, controlled the 
minds of its legislators and of its officials. A few 
instances will illustrate this. 

The war on the Southern side was conducted on the 
dogma of constitutional rights, and thus was limited 
during its earliest and most propitious stages to repel- 
ling invasion. No victory — not even one as com- 
plete as Bull Run — was considered to give warrant to 
invade non-seceded States, and while the government 
at Washington was with a strong hand breaking up 
sessions of the Maryland Legislature, making whole- 
sale arrests and flooding the territory of "neutral" 
Kentucky with armed forces to prevent her seceding, 
the armies of the South were held on the south side of 
the Potomac and the Ohio until the time had expired 
when they might, by an advance, have changed the 
destiny of the States and of the country. 

The Confederate Government had theories about 
cotton; theories about political economy in which 
cotton played a controlling part; theories about the 
necessity of the South 's being recognized by the lead- 
ing powers of Europe. They held the opinion that not 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 583 

only the North, but Europe, was dependent on cotton 
— "King Cotton," as it was termed. To control the 
supply of cotton and withhold it from Europe was, in 
their opinion, to compel the recognition of the South- 
ern Confederacy by Great Britain and France. Thus, 
tliough the Southern armies starved and supplies could 
have been had for cotton, the government forbade the 
transactions which might have relieved the situation, 
and while the ports of the South were being steadily 
sealed up, one after another, by blockade squadrons, 
and the cotton was being captured, abandoned, or 
burned, they still followed to the end the fatal ignis 
fatuus of foreign intervention, and failed to utilize to 
the utmost their own resources. The leaders were 
more high-minded than practical. 

The Confederate Government had theories of finance. 
So, though the necessaries of life in the region where 
the war was carried on rose till it was said that it took 
a basketful of bills to buy in the market a pocketful of 
food, they went on printing the money. In this they 
were ably seconded by the printing establishments of 
the North, which at times did a thriving business print- 
ing Confederate bills. Lee is said to have had meat on 
his table only twice a week on principle, and he pro- 
tested against the order allowing officials in Richmond 
to get government meat at government prices while 
the men "in the field were on starvation rations," but 
was overruled in the matter. Lee advocated at one 
time making Confederate money a legal tender, but 
this did not commend itself to those who controlled the 
Confederate finances. 



584 ROBERT E. LEE 

In fact, the Confederate Government — by which is 
signified its officials — had theories about nearly every- 
thing — on which, indeed, they were quite willing to 
stake their lives, if this would have done any good. 

Unfortunately, however, these views, whatever their 
soundness in the abstract, when put to the practical 
test in the crucible of war did not result in success, 
and the sincerity with which they were held did not 
add to their value. Lee's army starved and dwindled 
while the Confederate Congress debated and debated, 
often debating for weeks the most important measures 
till the exigency of the occasion had passed and the 
necessity for the particular action debated had been 
crowded from the stage by some new demand. Mr, 
Davis, in his Message to Congress on the 13th of 
March, 1865, complains of the ''long deliberation and 
protracted debate," which caused a dela}' that "in 
itself was a new source of peril." Even when earlier 
there had been abundant supplies in the country, and 
the transportation was fully adequate, these "were 
not under control." It was not, indeed, until March, 
1865, that the railroads were taken by the government. 
Up to this time no right was asserted.^ Yet, that the 
public men of the South were in the main good, high- 
minded, and patriotic men there can be no doubt. 
The truth was that such a form of government was 
not suited to the needs of a revolution. What was 
required was the power to direct vested in one man 
responsible for the result. This was recognized at the 
time by many. The Confederate Congress in the early 

' Letter of Judge John A. Campbell. 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 585 

spring of 1862 passed an act creating the office of com- 
mander-in-chief with a view to having the conduct of 
the mihtary operations free from the control of the 
civil power. This bill Mr. Davis vetoed as unconsti- 
tutional — as indeed it was — but he ''assigned" Gen- 
eral Lee "to duty at the seat of government and under 
the direction of the President," where he was ''charged 
with the conduct of military operations in the armies 
of the Confederacy." The first clause of this order 
governed the whole. He was "under the direction 
of the President." And the President exercised his 
authority. No strategy on a grand scale could be 
attempted without securing the approval of the Rich- 
mond authorities. 

The chief disaster, perhaps, was the persistent policy 
of the government to attempt to hold all of the South 
instead of adopting the military policy, urged by Lee, 
of concentrating its armies and dealing the adversary 
a crushing blow. Joseph E. Johnston, when in com- 
mand, proposed a campaign for the invasion of the 
North, in which Beauregard agreed with him; but the 
plan was not in accordance with the views of the Con- 
federate Government and was rejected. Later on, Lee 
likewise was hampered in the same fashion, and to the 
end submitted his most far-reaching plans to the Presi- 
dent for the approval of the government. It was a 
matter of common repute that toward the close of the 
struggle people constantly discussed the advisability 
of vesting in General Lee the power of dictator. Lee 
would have been the last man in the Confederacy to 
consent to this; but possibly it was the only way in 



586 ROBERT E. LEE 

which the South could have achieved its independence. 
It would, at least, have prevented the interference 
which kept the armies from reaching their highest 
efficiency. 

When, after the expedition to Romney, the Rich- 
mond government, through Mr. Benjamin, the Secre- 
tary of War, on a remonstrance of subordinate officers 
in Loring's command, reversed an order of Stonewall 
Jackson's, and directed him to recall Loring's force 
from Ronrney, Jackson complied promptly with their 
instruction and then tendered his resignation. John- 
ston, who had likewise been slighted, remonstrated 
with him, but Jackson said that "the authorities in 
Richmond must be taught a lesson or the next victims 
of their meddling will be Johnston or Lee." They 
learned the lesson so far as not to go again to such an 
extreme, but they meddled much in a different way, 
and both Johnston and Lee were the "victims." 
Johnston, who commanded in Georgia, in 1864, was 
finally, in response to public clamor, removed from his 
command at the most critical period of his campaign, 
and with results so disastrous to his command that, 
whatever the alternative, nothing could have been 
worse. Happily for Lee's peace of mind, he was of a 
temper and held views as to the relative province of the 
civil and military authority which prevented friction 
and saved him all heart-burning. "As obedient to law 
as Socrates," was w.ell said of him. If the law em- 
powered others with authority he recognized it as fully 
as they themselves and governed his course accord- 
ingly. He did his duty and left consequences to God. 



I 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 587 

But this did not alter the unhappy mistakes made in 
Richmond. 

He differed with the authorites radically on many 
vital matters, as may be gathered inferentially from 
his correspondence and action, but he neither inter- 
fered nor criticised. His duty, as he apprehended it, 
was to obey those above him and conmiand those under 
him. He was a soldier, and as a soldier he handled 
his army, leaving the rest to those on whom the respon- 
sibility devolved. The difference at times touched him 
nearly, for it touched his army. The authorities be- 
lieved in the popular election of officers by their men. 
Inasmuch as the government of the Confederate States 
was a free government, based on the will of the people, 
it was decided that her soldiery, as free citizens of a 
republic, should have the privilege of electing their 
officers below the rank of brigadier-general; this, too, 
in the face of the enemy and though the election 
was destructive of discipline. Lee knew that it would 
result in demoralization, but his reference to it was 
simply that we are "in the midst of the fermenta- 
tion " incident to the reorganization of the army. Many 
of the most efficient and experienced officers of the line 
were, in fact, thereby deprived of their commands and 
supplanted by men who might never have worn a sword 
and "smelt damnably of the halberd." The Confeder- 
ate authorities believed that England and France would 
certainly come to the aid of the South after "the Trent 
affair." Lee foresaw with clearer vision that the Fed- 
eral Government would yield and surrender the envoys 
with apologies, and in private letters he stated the 



588 ROBERT E. LEE 

necessity of abandoning all expectation of foreign 
intervention and substituting therefore self-reliance 
and fortitude. 

However on questions of vital policy he differed with 
the civil authorities, he acted under their authority 
with unabated zeal. For example, on the subject of 
the employment of the negroes as soldiers, Lee held 
very different views from those of the authorities at 
Richmond. Many of them had been in the service all 
along as teamsters, axemen, and farriers, and by the 
autumn of 1864 the question was seriously debated 
whether they should not be armed and employed as 
soldiers. Lee was strongly of the opinion that they 
should be. He knew as no one else did the importance 
of filling his depleted ranks. He felt as well as others 
the difficulties of the measure he advocated, but he 
believed they could be overcome. He knew that the 
enemy used them by tens of thousands, and that under 
proper training and conunand they made good soldiers. 
He felt that it would only be proper to give them the 
reward of freedom. But on this point the authorities 
held different views, and the result was destructive. 

They had theories about the institution of slavery, 
and in the main sound theories — moreover, it was a 
most complex and delicate matter to handle with ref- 
erence to domestic concerns, and the new complication 
growing out of war and invasion. So, though the Union 
armies had mustered in some two hundred thousand 
negroes, it was not until the winter of 1864-65 when 
the Army of Northern Virginia had almost perished that 
it was decided to recruit negroes for service in the field. 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 589 

The plan was proposed in the autumn, was agitated 
all winter, and was acted on only as Lee was being 
forced out of his entrenchments before Richmond, and 
then in a form which robbed it of the essential feat- 
ure of granting freedom, which alone could have made 
it effective. Lee's last letter before Petersburg dealt 
with this matter. 

Lee's views are expressed in a letter which he wrote 
to a prominent Virginian in February, who had asked 
his views on the subject. 

Head-quarters Confederate States Armies, 

■u- T7I -o February 18, 1865. 

Hon. E. Barksdale, ^ ' 

House of Representatives, Richmond. 

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of 
your letter of the 12th instant, with reference to the 
employment of negroes as soldiers. I think the meas- 
ure not only ^expedient but necessary. The enemy will 
certainly use them against us if he can get possession of 
them; and as his present numerical superiority will 
enable him to penetrate many parts of the country, I 
cannot see the wisdom of the poHcy of holding them to 
await his arrival, when we may, by timely action and 
judicious management, use them to arrest his progress. 
I do not think that our white population can supply the 
necessities of a long war without overtaxing its capac- 
ity and imposing great suffering upon our people ; and 
I believe we should provide resources for a protracted 
struggle — not merely for a battle or a campaign. 

In answer to your second question, I can only say 
that in my opinion the negroes, under proper circum- 
stances, will make efficient soldiers. I think we could 
at least do as well with them as the enemy, and he 
attaches great importance to their assistance. Under 



590 ROBERT E. LEE 

good officers and good instructions, I do not see why 
they should not become soldiers. They possess all the 
physical qualifications, and their habits of obedience 
constitute a good foundation for discipline. They fur- 
nish a more promising material than many armies of 
which we read in history, which owed their efficiency 
to discipline alone. I think those who are employed 
should be freed. It would neither be just nor wise, in 
my opinion, to require them to serve as slaves. The 
best course to pursue, it seems to me, would be to call 
for such as are willing to come with the consent of their 
owners. An impressment or draft would not be likely 
to bring out the best class, and the use of coercion would 
make the measure distasteful to them and to their owners. 

I have no doubt that if Congress would authorize 
their reception into service, and empower the President 
to call upon individuals or States for such as they are 
willing to contribute, with the condition of emancipa- 
tion to all enrolled, a sufficient number would be forth- 
coming to enable us to try the experiment. If it proved 
successful, most of the objections to the measure would 
disappear, and if individuals still remained unwilling 
to send their negroes to the army, the force of public 
opinion in the States would soon bring about such leg- 
islation as would remove all obstacles. I think the 
matter should be left, as far as possible, to the people 
and to the States, which alone can legislate as the ne- 
cessities of this particular service may require. As to 
the mode of organizing them, it should be left as free 
from restraint as possible. Experience will suggest the 
best course, and it will be inexpedient to trammel the 
subject with provisions that might, in the end, prevent 
the adoption of reforms suggested by actual trial. 

With great respect. 

Your obedient servant, 

R. E. Lee, General. 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 591 

The proposition to enlist negroes, though introduced 
in November, was not passed until March, 1865, and 
then the bill merely authorized the President to accept 
for service such slaves as the masters might choose 
to put into military service, and General Lee's recom- 
mendation as to their emancipation was not acted on. 
It came to nothing, and it is quite possible that it might 
have done so even had the measure been adopted in 
time; but the delay and the failure to approve Gen- 
eral Lee's recommendation illustrate the difficulties 
with which Lee had to contend in dealing with the 
government. It was inherent in the existing condi- 
tions. 

The interference of the government affected even the 
constituency of his army. 

''The government, at the opening of the year 1864," 
says one familiar with the subject, "estimated that the 
conscription would place four hundred thousand troops 
in the field." ^ Lee saw with clearer eyes. The meas- 
ure not only failed to provide what was expected of it, 
but by the end of the year it was, in the opinion of Lee, 
"diminishing rather than increasing the strength of 
his army." ^ 

The pernicious system of details which prevailed con- 
trary to Lee's "wishes, and the not less pernicious habit 
of setting aside the findings of the courts-martial and 
pardoning deserters contributed to render his difficult 
position one of yet more extreme difficulty. 

Desertions were perilously frequent, and the govern- 

» "Life of General Lee," by J. D. McCabe (1866), p. 573. 
'^Letter of December 31, 1864. 



592 ROBERT E. LEE 

ment at Richmond prevented the execution of sentence 
on the culprit. Longstreet protested and Lee endorsed 
on his protest, ''Desertion is increasing in the army 
notwithstanding all my efforts to stop it. I think a 
rigid execution of the law is mercy in the end. The 
great want in our army is firm discipline." 

To this, which was referred by the Secretary of War 
to the President for his information, Mr. Davis, on No- 
vember 29, 1864, replied: "When deserters are arrested 
they should be tried, and if the sentences are reviewed 
and remitted, that is not a proper subject for the criti- 
cism of a military commander." 

Hardly any fact lets in a clearer light than this on 
one of the basic difficulties with which Lee had to con- 
tend in his titanic task of defending the South. Mr. 
Davis was so jealous of his constitutional rights that 
he could insist on them in face of Lee's solemn state- 
ment that his army, the chief bulwark of the whole 
Confederate fabric, was being undermined by the erro- 
neous exercise of the right. 

The idea had got abroad that men who left Lee's 
army could be enrolled for service in organizations 
nearer home, and under this temptation in the fearful 
winter of 1864-65 numbers of men left his lines and went 
to their own States with this in view. Indeed, it might 
almost be said that toward the latter part of the war 
the people of more than one of the States to the south- 
ward considered themselves so neglected by the govern- 
ment as to be almost ready for open revolt against the 
Confederacy. At least three States had "passed laws 
to withdraw from service men liable to it under exist- 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 593 

ing laws." ^ And as late as the 13th of March, 1865, 
Mr. Davis sent in a message asking the Congress to pro- 
vide a law for organizing the militia and empowering 
him to call them out. He stated in this message that 
the governor of one State had declared that he had no 
power to call the militia to cross a county line, while 
the executive of another State had ''refused to allow 
the militia to be employed in the service of the Con- 
federate States in the absence of a law for that pur- 
pose." ^ The government had doubtless done the best 
that it could do ; but it is certain that if it had not lost 
the confidence of the people at large, it was rapidly 
doing so. By the end of 1864, all eyes were turned to 
Lee. He was recognized as the sole hope of the Con- 
federacy. In January, 1865, the Virginia Legislature 
testified unmistakably its lack of confidence in the gen- 
eral government, and a committee with the speaker at 
its head waited on the President to inform him of the 
fact, while a yet more significant omen was the opposi- 
tion of the Congress. Before the close of the last ses- 
sion of the Congress, they were almost at an open 
breach, as is shown by the tart reply of the Senate Com- 
mittee to the President's message of March 13, 1865, 
taking them to task for their "protracted debate" on 
vital subjects. Among other resentful charges, they 
twit him with their having created the office of general- 
in-chief, without any suggestion from him, "with a 
view to the restoration of public confidence and the 

* Letter of Judge John A. Campbell to General John C. Breckinridge, 
Secretary of War, March 5, 1865. 

="'The Civil War during the Year 1865," by John A. Campbell, 
pp. 49, 50. 



594 ROBERT E. LEE 

energetic administration of military affairs." It was 
apparent at last that some other plan of conducting 
the war than that which had hitherto been followed was 
necessary. A change was made in the War Depart- 
ment, and General Breckinridge became Secretary of 
War, while General Lee was made Commander of the 
Armies of the Confederacy. The Legislature of Vir- 
ginia passed a resolution declaring that the appoint- 
ment of General Robert E. Lee to the command of all 
the armies of the Confederate States ''would promote 
their efficiency and operate powerfully to reanimate 
the spirits of the armies, as well as of the people of the 
several States, and to inspire increased confidence in 
the final success of our cause." To this Mr. Davis 
replied with dignity that the opinion expressed by the 
General Assembly in regard to General Lee had his full 
concurrence; and that Virginia could not have a higher 
regard for him or greater confidence in his character 
and ability than was entertained by him. "When 
General Lee," he added, "took command of the Army 
of Northern Virginia he was in command of all the 
armies of the Confederate States by my order of assign- 
ment. He continued in this general command of the 
Army of Northern Virginia as long as I would resist 
his opinion that it was necessary for him to be relieved 
from one of these two duties. Ready as he has ever 
shown himself to perfonn any service that I desired 
him to render to his country, he left it to me to choose 
between his withdrawal from the command of the army 
in the field and relieving him of the general command 
of all the armies of the Confederate States. It was 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 595 

only when satisfied of the necessity that I came to the 
conclusion to relieve him of the general command, be- 
lieving that the safety of the capital and the success of 
our cause depended, in a great measure, on the retain- 
ing him in the command in the field of the Army of 
Northern Virginia. On several subsequent occasions, 
the desire on my part to enlarge the sphere of General 
Lee's usefulness has led to renewed consideration of the 
subject, and he has always expressed his inability to 
assume command of other armies than those now con- 
fided to him, unless relieved of the immediate command 
in the field of that now opposed to General Grant." 

Mr. Davis, however, had unyieldingly opposed the 
proposition for Congress to call Lee to the position as 
an infringment on his consitutional rights, and earlier 
in the war had, as already stated, vetoed the bill passed 
for this purpose. Alexander H. Stephens declares that 
Lee asked to be relieved from the position of responsi- 
bility because he had no power. In the imminent dan- 
ger of immediate collapse it was now agreed that the 
Congress should provide the position, and the Presi- 
dent then appointed Lee to fill it, the order being dated 
February 5, 1865. The measure even in this form was 
opposed by many of Mr. Davis's friends, and one of the 
historians of the time states that on the final passage 
of the bill fourteen of the President's friends voted 
against it, and that Mrs. Davis declared that had she 
been in the President's place, before she would have 
submitted to the humiliation of being deprived of her 
rights in this matter she would have been hanged.^ 

1 McCabe's "Life of General R. E. Lee." 



596 ROBERT E. LEE 

Anotner difficulty, however, stood in the wa}'. Lee 
himself had declared that he would not accept the 
position in opposition to Mr. Davis, but only at his 
hands. The phrase in his first general order to his 
armies is significant of his point of view: 

Head-quarters, Confederate Army, 

February 9, 1865. 
General Order No. 1. In obedience to General Order 
No. 3 ... I assume command of the military forces 
of the Confederate States. . . . 

Longstreet declares his astonishment at Lee's failure 
to exercise the enormous powers now vested in him. 
But it was too late now for any exercise of power to 
have changed the issue. 

Fortunately for Lee, the relations between him and 
the President of the Confederacy were ever of the most 
cordial kind. They had known each other long and 
well, and each recognized in the other the qualities that 
ennobled them. During a considerable portion of the 
war the President kept near him General Lee's eldest 
son. General Custis Lee, himself an accomplished en- 
gineer and soldier. Mr. Davis was a man of the highest 
character and of absolute devotion to the consitutional 
principles, to whose preservation he pledged his life and 
powers. He was a trained soldier, and in the Mexican 
war had displayed marked dash, courage, and ability as 
a regimental commander. Moreover, he had had great 
experience, and as Secretary of War of the United 
States had made a reputation for breadth of view and 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 597 

power of organization which to-day places him second 
to none among those who have held that important 
office. It was under him that the first regiments of 
cavalry as an independent arm of the service were or- 
ganized, and one of these Lee had commanded. Thus 
the two men knew and respected each other, and when, 
after the unsuccessful "West" Virginia campaign, Lee 
was the object of much foolish criticism and clamor, 
Mr. Davis stood by him and not only relied on him as 
his military adviser, but, on Johnston's being wounded 
at Seven Pines, appointed him commander of the army 
before Richmond — the Army of Northern Virginia. 
Wlien he assigned Lee to the duty of defending the 
South Atlantic coast, and protest was made against 
his choice, he wrote to the governor of South Car- 
olina: "If Lee is not a general, I have none to send 
you." 

"As he was courageous, physically and morally he 
was a man of convictions — absolutely direct, frank, 
and positive," says one of his friends of Mr. Davis (Gen- 
eral Breckinridge). Or, to use Lee's own expression 
about him, who ever held him in high and affectionate 
esteem, he was "very tenacious in opinion and purpose." 
This, however, did not prevent Mr. Davis's being a doc- 
trinaire, and one whose theories, at times, honest as 
they were, interfered disastrously with practical action. 
Possibly he was too positive. At least he had the cour- 
age of his convictions, and, conscious of his own recti- 
tude of intention and conduct, he was hard to change. 
He was subject to strong impressions, and was conse- 
quently not only inclined to favoritism, but was liable 



598 ROBERT E. LEE 

to be influenced by persons of strong convictions and 
determined will who might be about him ; and at times 
he displayed what was not far from sheer obstinacy. 
He was described by an enemy — and he had many — 
as ''standing in a comer telling his beads and relying 
on a miracle to save the country." It was not true; 
but it contained this grain of truth, that he shut his 
eyes at times to facts plain to other men, and stood firm 
for a policy which, sound under other conditions, was 
now destructive. Against all criticism of him — and he 
was the target for much abuse and adverse criticism — 
we have Lee's judgment that he did "as well possibly 
as any other man could have done in the same posi- 
tion." 

Toward Lee he was ever considerate and kind, yet 
he held on to his own power even where Lee was con- 
cerned. Lee could only get Major — afterward Gen- 
eral — Long promoted to the rank he wished him to 
have, by appointing him his military secretary, and 
his request for the appointment of his chief of staff was 
not granted. And though, as we have seen, Mr. Davis 
declared afterward in his autobiography that Lee had 
long been, to all intents and purposes, conmiander-in- 
chief of the Confederate States armies, every experi- 
enced man knows the vast difference between being the 
untitled adviser of an official and the responsible official 
himself. 

The difference would have been peculiarly marked 
in Lee, who never exceeded authority nor shirked 
responsibility. Had he been commander of all the 
armies of the Confederacy, Jolinston would probably 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 599 

not have retired from the hne of the Rappahannock in 
1862. And it is certain that he would not have been 
relieved from command before Sherman in the summer 
of 1864. It is also probable that the wellnigh impreg- 
nable line of the North Anna would have been selected 
as the defensive line against Burnside and Hooker 
instead of the heights of Fredericksburg, which in 
the judgment of critics, though likewise impregnable, 
did not present the advantage of a field for efficient 
pursuit of the defeated assailants. But, quite apart 
from these errors, had Lee been in supreme command 
of the armies of the South, his handling of the weapon 
with which he fought McClellan and Pope and Burn- 
side and Hooker and Grant would have been freer, and 
probably it would have been a more efficient weapon 
than it was, as efficient as Grant's casualty list proves 
it to have been. 

Not only was Lee's judgment as to strategy and the 
disposition of troops, even in the face of the enemy, often 
in overwhelming force, cramped by the need to defer 
to the authorities in Richmond ; but the very life of the 
army was subject to the same disastrous influences. 
Reinforcements, exemption, straggling, desertion, pro- 
motion of inferior men and failure to promote superior 
men, subsistence, and equipment were all dealt with by 
the Richmond government. 

And Lee, already overburdened, was weighted down 
by the additional burden of having to bow to the inev- 
itable in the form now of political interference, and 
now of personal incompetence. 

Lee repeatedly found himself obliged to write to the 



600 ROBERT E. LEE 

President urging with insistence the absolute necessity 
of upholding his hands with respect to the suppression 
of straggling and desertion and other offences that were 
''injurious to the cause." His urgency appears, as has 
been stated, to have been taken, in one case at least, 
as a usurpation of executive authority. 

That "an army moves on its belly" has as good 
authority as Napoleon. But the belly of the Confed- 
erate armies was nearly always empty. The commis- 
sary-general of subsistence was an old comrade and a 
favorite with the head of the government, and he had 
theories as to the regular way in which to gather sup- 
plies and subsist an army which nothing could shake. 
It mattered not that the armies starved and the generals 
protested. He took orders only from the President, 
and naught could move him. That he was patriotic 
and honest did not make amends for his unpractical 
theories or fill the haversacks of the Confederate sol- 
diery. Johnston said his army had not more than two 
days' provisions stored, and we know what the neces- 
sities of Lee's army were during the years he fought 
it, and the well-meaning incompetents of the Commis- 
sary Bureau undertook with so little success to feed it. 
Lee at times had not one day's rations. The tale of 
the killed and wounded in battle may be arrived at 
with reasonable approximation ; the tale of the starved 
and depleted victims of incompetence will never be 
imagined. But we know that among the most disas- 
trous consequences of Lee's dependence on the civil 
authority was his inability to command the production 
of the necessary supplies for his army. An illustration 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 601 

may be found in his correspondence with the govern- 
ment at Richmond in the winter of 1863, when his army 
was at Fredericksburg, after the victory of Fredericks- 
burg and before that of Chancellorsville. 

On the 26th of January he wrote to Mr. Seddon, the 
Secretary of War — himself a high-minded and unselfish 
patriot of large experience: "As far as I can learn, we 
have now about one week'« supply: four days' fresh 
beef and four days' salt meat of the reduced ration/ 
After that is exhausted I know not whence further sup- 
plies can be drawn. The question of provisioning the 
army is becoming one of greater difficulty every day. 
The country north of us is pretty well drained of every- 
thing the people are willing to part with, except some 
grain and hay in Loudoun. Nor can impressment be 
resorted to with advantage, inasmuch as provisions 
retained for domestic use are concealed. A resort to 
impressment would, in my opinion, in this region pro- 
duce aggravation and suffering among the people with- 
out much benefit. But I think if the citizens in the 
whole country were appealed to they would be willing 
to restrict themselves and furnish what they have to 
the army. 

*'I am more than usually anxious about the supplies 
of the army, as it will be impossible to keep it together 
without food." 

On this letter the following endorsement was made 
at Richmond by General L. B. Northrup, the com- 
missary-general of subsistence: 

' One-quarter pound. Lee's letter to J. A. Seddon, Secretary of 
War, April 17, 1863. 



602 ROBERT E. LEE 

Subsistence Department, 

January 28, 1863. 
Fifteen months ago this bureau foresaw that the sup- 
ply of cattle in Virginia would be exhausted. . . . The 
meat has held out longer than was expected. . . . The 
order of the War Department reducing the ration of 
meat and increasing that of flour as referred to has not 
been observed in the Army of Virginia for a period of 
between three and four months by order of General Lee, 
and the use of the whole beef (necks and shanks in- 
cluded) which was attempted to be instituted by the 
commissary-general of subsistence has not been ob- 
served in that army, the discontent and other obstacles 
being urged as insurmountable in the field. . . . All 
the transportation that can be begged will be needed 
to get wheat to be converted into flour for the same 
army that now wants meat. General Lee's suggestion 
that an appeal be made to the citizens to forward sup- 
plies is noted by this bureau and is not approved. . . . 
Respectfully, 

L. B. NORTHRUP,^ 

Commissary-General of Subsistence. 

Could anything be imagined more tragic than this — 
a commissary-general disallowing the suggestion of a 
commanding general as to food for his army, and rebuk- 
ing him for insubordination? 

It is small wonder that Lee's health gave way that 
winter and that a year later he asked for his son to 
come and act as his chief of staff, on the ground that 
he was sensible of a diminution of his strength since 
this illness. 

' O. R., VIII, pp. 674, 675. Bigelow's " Chancellorsville Campaign," 
pp. 33, 34. 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 603 

Two years after this, Sherman destroyed what he 
estimated as one hundred million dollars' worth of 
crops in the South and made other disposition of the 
transportation which the commissary-general of sub- 
sistence could only secure by begging. 

All during the winter of 1863 and early spring of 
1864, and, indeed, throughout that winter, Lee's offi- 
cial correspondence shows with what clear eyes he 
viewed the situation and how he was powerless to 
meet it. From time to time he shows impatience at 
the publication of his plans through the press, and 
time and again we discover in his letters the disas- 
trous want of the supplies absolutely needed to enable 
him to use his army efficiently. Even as far back as 
the 19th of October, 1863, for example, he writes to 
Brigadier-General A. R. Lawton, the quartermaster- 
general at Richmond, and to the Hon. James A. 
Seddon, the Secretary of War, letters which show this 
need: 

Head-quaeters Army of Northern Virginia, 

October 19, 1863. 
Lawton, Brigadier-General, A. R., 
Quartermaster-General, Richmond, Va. 

General: I have received your letter of the 12th, and 
am very glad to find that your exertions to supply the 
army have been so successful. The want of the sup- 
plies of shoes, clothing, overcoats, and blankets is very 
great. Nothing but my unwillingness to expose the 
men to the hardships that would have resulted from 
moving them into Loudoun in their present condition 
induced me to return to the Rappahannock. But I 
was averse to marching them over the rough roads of 



604 ROBERT E. LEE 

that region, at a season, too, when frosts are certain and 
snows probable, unless they were better provided to 
encounter them without suffering. 

I should otherwise have endeavored to detain Gen- 
eral Meade near the Potomac, if I could not throw him 
to the north side. 

The supplies that you now have at your disposal for 
this army will be most welcome, and I trust that your 
exertions to increase them will meet with full success. 
Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

R. E. Lee, General.^ 

Head-quarters Army of Northern Virginia, 

19 October, 1863. 
Hon. James A. Seddon, 

Secretary of War, Richmond, Va. 
Sir: I have had the honor to receive your letter of 
the 16th inst. I am doubtful as yet whether General 
Meade will remain on the defensive. . . . 

If General Meade is disposed to remain quiet where 
he is, it was my intention, provided the army could be 
supplied with clothing, again to advance and threaten 
his positions. Nothing prevented my continuing in 
his front but the destitute condition of the men, thou- 
sands of whom are barefooted, a greater number par- 
tially shod, and nearly all without overcoats, blankets, 
or warm clothing. I think the sublimest sight of the 
war was the cheerfulness and alacrity exhibited by 
this army in the pursuit of the enemy under all the 
trials and privations to which it was exposed. . . . 
Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

R. E. Lee, General' 

On January 2, he writes to the President that he can 
learn of no supply of meat on the road to the army, 

• Long's " Lee," p. 629. => Ibid., p. 629. 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 605 

and he fears that he will be unable to retain it in the 
field. Three days later he writes to the commissary- 
general, Colonel L. B. Northrup, that he regrets very 
much to learn that the supply of beef for the army is 
so nearly exhausted; that no beef had been issued to 
the cavalry corps by the chief commissary for eighteen 
months, and that "during that time it has supplied 
itself, and has now, I understand, sufficient to last until 
the middle of February. . . . 

'^I cannot adopt," he says, ''your suggestion to em- 
ploy the organisation of your bureau to impress pro- 
visions. Neither the law nor regulations of the War 
Department, in my opinion, give me that power. ..." 

To President Davis, who had written suggesting 
that he should go to North Carolina and take charge 
of the expedition to capture Newberne, he writes on 
the 20th of January: "In view of the opinion expressed 
in your letter, I would go to North Carolina myself; 
but I consider my presence here always necessary, 
especially now when there is such a struggle to keep 
the army fed and clothed." 

On the 3d of February he writes him that "the ap- 
proach of spring causes me to consider with anxiety 
the probable action of the enemy, and the possible 
operations of ours in the ensuing campaign. If we 
could take the initiative and fall upon them unexpect- 
edly, we might derange their plans and embarrass 
them the whole summer. There are only two points 
east of the Mississippi where it now appears this could 
be done." . . . "We are not in a condition, and never 
have been, in my opinion, to invade the enemy's coun- 



606 ROBERT E. LEE 

try with a prospect of permanent benefit. But we 
can alarm and embarrass him to some extent, and 
thus prevent his undertaking anything of magnitude 
against us." 

On April 12, 1864, he writes to President Davis: 
"My anxiety on the subject of provisions for the army 
is so great that I cannot refrain from expressing it to 
your Excellency. I cannot see how we can operate 
with our present supplies. Any derangement in their 
arrival or disaster to the railroad would render it im- 
possible for me to keep the army together, and might 
force a retreat into North Carolina. There is nothing 
to be had in this section for men or animals. We have 
rations for the troops to-day and to-morrow. I hope 
a new supply arrived last night, but I have not yet had 
a report. Every exertion should be made to supply 
the depots at Richmond and at other points. All 
pleasure travel should cease and everything be devoted 
to necessary wants." 

This letter he follows up on the 15th of April, when 
he writes the President: "We shall have to glean 
troops from every quarter to oppose the apparent 
combination of the enemy. If Richmond could be 
held secure against the attack from the east, I would 
propose that I draw Longstrcct to me and move right 
against the enemy on the Rappahannock. Should 
God give us a crowning victory there, all their plans 
would be dissipated, and their troops now collecting on 
the waters of the Chesapeake would be recalled to the 
defence of Washington. But to make this move I 
must have provisions and forage. I am not yet able 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 607 

to call to me the cavalry or artillery. If I am obliged 
to retire from this line, either by a flank movement of 
the enemy or the want of supplies, great injury will 
befall us. I have ventured to throw out these sugges- 
tions to your Excellency in order that in surveying the 
whole field of operations you may consider all the cir- 
cumstances bearing on the question. Should you de- 
termine it is better to divide this army and fall back 
toward Richmond, I am ready to do so. I, however, 
see no better plan for the defence of Richmond than 
that I have proposed." 

Subordination to the civil authority was the key to 
Lee's action throughout the war. It speaks in all of 
his correspondence and utterances relating to the civil 
government of the Confederacy. It is found in the 
very beginning of the war in a letter to Mrs. Lee, where 
in reply to her suggestion of the rumor that he was to 
be made commander-in-chief, he stated simply that 
this position was held by President Davis. It is found 
at the end of the war in his reply to General Gordon, 
who, in an interview with him in the beginning of Feb- 
ruary, 1865, having learned from his lips his view of the 
almost desperate situation, inquired if he had made his 
views known to President Davis or to the Congress. 
He received the reply, states his corps commander, 
"that he scarcely felt authorized to suggest to the civil 
authorities the advisability of making terms with the 
government of the United States. He said that he was 
a soldier, that it was his province to obey the orders of 
the government, and to advise or counsel with the civil 
authorities only upon questions directly affecting his 



608 ROBERT E. LEE 

army and its defence of the capital and the country." ^ 
Though his administration of every office which he 
ever filled showed his ability to grapple successfully 
with whatever problems life presented to him, he was 
careful to abstain from all that savored of political 
work. He gave his advice frankly when it was re- 
quested; but beyond this held himself scrupulously 
aloof from interference in political matters. His views 
on this subject were set forth clearly when on one occa- 
sion, toward the end of the war, Senator B. H. Hill, of 
Georgia, approached him with the suggestion that he 
should give his views on ''the propriety of changing 
the seat of government and going further South." 

His reply was: "That is a political question, Mr. 
Hill, and you politicians must determine it. I shall 
endeavor to take care of the army, and you must make 
the laws and control the government." 

"Ah, General, but you will have to change that rule," 
said the Georgia senator, "and form and express po- 
litical opinions; for if we establish our independence 
the people will make you Mr. Davis's successor." 

"Never, sir," said Lee; "that I will never permit. 
Whatever talents I may possess (and they are but lim- 
ited) are military talents. My education and training 
are military. I think the military and civil talents are 
distinct if not different, and full duty in either sphere 
is about as much as one man can qualify himself to 
perform. I shall not do the people the injustice to 
accept high civil office with whose questions it has 
not been my business to become familiar." 

' "Reminiscences of the Civil W^ar," General John B. Gordon, p. 390. 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 609 

''Well — but, General," persisted Hill, "history does 
not sustain your view. Caesar, Frederick of Prussia, 
and Bonaparte were great statesmen as well as great 
generals." 

"And great tyrants," replied Lee promptly. "I 
speak of the proper rule in republics, where I think we 
should have neither military statesmen nor political 
generals." 

"But Washington was both/' urged Hill, "and yet 
not a tyrant." 

"Washington was an exception to all rules and there 
was none like him," said he, smiling. 

It was doubtless this conversation which led Hill in 
after years, in pronouncing his eulogy on General Lee, 
to utter the fine saying that "he was Caesar without 
his ambition, Frederick without his tyranny, Napoleon 
without his selfishness, and Washington without his 
reward." 

Lee also held different views from those which con- 
trolled in the Confederate civil councils on the more 
vital subject of proposals for peace. 

When he first crossed the Potomac he had in mind 
the possibility of its leading to negotiations for peace, 
and so wrote Mr. Davis.^ And again, on the eve of his 
second invasion of the North, he addressed to Mr. 
Davis a letter advocating measures for encouraging 
"the rising peace party of the North," almost urgent 
in its- terms. ^ "Nor do I think," he wrote, "we should 
in this connection make nice distinction between those 

* Letter of September 8, 1862, quoted ante. 
^ Letter of June 10, 1863, quoted ante. 



610 ROBERT E. LEE 

who declare for peace unconditionally and those who 
advocate it as a means of restoring the Union, how- 
ever much we may prefer the former. . . . When peace 
is proposed it will be time enough to discuss its terms, 
and it is not the part of providence to spurn the propo- 
sition in advance." This was certainly a very differ- 
ent view of the case from that held by the civil rulers 
in Richmond, who, even as late as the Hampton Roads 
Conference, were as firm in their demands for independ- 
ence as on the day after First Manassas. They could 
not understand that conditions had changed since the 
preceding summer, and they were still misled by ac- 
counts of disaffection at the North and by the ig?iis 
fatuus of foreign intervention. 

Thus we see that however little inclined Lee was to 
interfere in civil matters, he was ready, at need, to lend 
his aid to further the cause of peace whenever it was 
desired by the civil authorities. Such an occasion 
occurred in February, 1865, and Lee, on finding that it 
was the wish of the President, acceded to the suggestion 
to open a correspondence with Grant, who had been 
reported as desirous to discuss with him the possibility 
of arriving at a satisfactory adjustment of the unhappy 
difficulties in the way of a peace settlement by means 
of "a military convention." 

Longstreet, who it appears was first approached on 
the subject, has given the following account of the 
negotiations. He states that on the 20th of February, 
1865, General Ord, conmianding the Army of the James, 
sent him a note asking him to arrange a meeting with 
him with a view to putting a stop to the bartering 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 611 

which went on between the troops on the picket lines; 
and that inasmuch as Ord knew that he could at any 
time put a stop to his men doing this by a simple order, 
he surmised that there must be some other matters 
which he wished to discuss with him, and accordingly 
acceded to his request. They met next day between 
the lines, and presently Ord asked for a "side inter- 
view," which was acceded to. 

"When he spoke of the purpose of the meeting," 
says Longstreet, "I mentioned a simple manner of cor- 
recting the matter, which he accepted without objec- 
tion or amendment. Then he spoke of affairs military 
and political. 

"Referring to the recent conference of the Confed- 
erates with President Lincoln at Hampton Roads, he 
said that the politicians of the North were afraid to 
touch the question of peace, and there was no way to 
open the subject except through officers of the armies. 
On his side they thought the war had gone on long 
enough ; that we should come together as former com- 
rades and friends and talk a little. He suggested that 
the work as belligerents should be suspended; that 
General Grant and General Lee should meet and have 
a talk ; that my wife, who was an old acquaintance and 
friend of Mrs. Grant in their girlhood days, should go 
into the Union lines and visit Mrs. Grant with as many 
Confederate officers as might choose to be with her. 
Then Mrs. Grant would return the call under escort of 
Union officers and visit Richmond ; that while General 
Lee and General Grant were arranging for better feel- 
ing between the armies they could be aided by inter- 



612 ROBERT E. LEE 

course between the ladies and officers until terms hon- 
orable to both sides could be found. 

''I told General Ord that I was not authorized to 
speak on the subject, but could report upon it to Gen- 
eral Lee and the Confederate authorities, and would 
give notice in case a reply could be made. 

"General Lee was called over to Riclnnond and we 
met at night at the President's mansion. Secretary of 
War Breckinridge was there. The report was made, 
several hours were passed in discussing the matter, and 
finally it was agreed that favorable report should be 
made as soon as another meeting could be arranged 
with General Ord. Secretary Breckinridge expressed 
especial approval of the part assigned for the ladies. 

"As we separated I suggested to General Lee that 
he should name some irrelevant matter as the occasion 
of his call for the interview with General Grant, and 
that once they were together they could talk as they 
pleased. A telegram was sent my wife that night at 
Lynchburg calling her to Richmond, and the next day 
a note was sent General Ord asking him to appoint a 
time for another meeting. 

"The meeting," continues Longstreet, "was ap- 
pointed for the day following, and the result of the 
conference was reported. General Ord asked to have 
General Lee write General Grant for an interview, stat- 
ing that General Grant was prepared to receive the 
letter, and thought that a way could be found for a 
military convention, while old friends of the military 
service could get together and seek out waj^s to stop 
the flow of blood. He indicated a desire on the part of 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 613 

President Lincoln to devise some means or excuse for 
paying for the liberated slaves, which might be arranged 
as a condition and part of the terms of the convention 
and relieve the matter of political bearing; but those 
details were in the form of remote probabilities to be 
discussed when the parties became advanced in their 
search for ways of settlement." 

On the 1st of March, Longstreet wrote General Lee, 
giving a report of the second interview with Ord, and 
on the 2d of March, Lee wrote Grant the following 
letter: 

Head-quarters Confederate States Armies, 

March 2, 1865. 
Lieutenant-General U. S. Grant, 
Commanding United States Armies. 

General: Lieutenant-General Longstreet has informed 
me that in a recent conversation between himself and 
Major-General Ord as to the possibility of arriving at a 
satisfactory adjustment of the present unhappy diffi- 
culties by means of a military convention. General Ord 
states that if I desired to have an interview with you 
on the subject you would not decline, provided I had 
authority to act. Sincerely desiring to leave nothing 
untried which may put an end to the calamities of war, 
I propose to meet you at such convenient time and 
place as you may designate, with the hope that upon an 
interchange of opinions it may be found practicable to 
submit the subjects of controversy between the bellig- 
erents to a convention of the kind mentioned. In such 
event I am authorized to do whatever the result of the 
proposed interview may render necessary or advisable. 
Should you accede to this proposition, I would suggest 
that, if agreeable to you, we meet at the place selected 



614 ROBERT E. LEE 

by Generals Ord and Longstreet for their interview, at 
11 A. M. on Monday next. 
Very respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

R. E. Lee, General. 

This letter was sent to Longstreet open, with instruc- 
tions to read, seal, and forward. Longstreet, having 
read it, disapproved of the true object of the interview 
being so frankly mentioned, and, as he states, ''rode 
into Richmond to ask that some other business should 
be named as the cause of the call for the interview, but 
he [Lee] was not disposed to approach his purpose by 
diplomacy, and ordered the letter to be delivered. He, 
however, wrote and sent another letter also, which 
related to the exchange of prisoners, and closed by 
saying: 'Should you see proper to assent to the inter- 
view proposed in my letter of this date, I hope it may 
be found practicable to arrive at a more satisfactory 
understanding on this subject. ' " 

To this proposal of Lee's, Grant replied two days 
later in a letter, the first part of which related to the 
question of the exchange of prisoners mentioned in 
Lee's second note. As to the matter suggested by Ord, 
he replied, declining the interview, saying: 

"... In regard to meeting you on the 6th instant, 
I would state that I have no authority to accede to 
your proposition for a conference on the subject pro- 
posed. Such authority is vested in the President of the 
United States alone. General Ord could only have 
meant that I would not refuse an interview on any 
subject on which I have a right to act, which, of course, 



THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT 615 

would be such as are of a military character, and on 
the subject of exchanges which has been intrusted 
to me. 

U. S. Grant, Lieutenant-General. 



It appears that Grant, on receiving Lee's letter, 
notified the government in Washington, and Mr. Lin- 
coln sent him, through Stanton, on the 3d of March, a 
telegram instructing him to "have no conference with 
General Lee, unless it were for the capitulation of Lee's 
army," or on some minor and purely military matter, 
and stated further that Grant was "not to decide, dis- 
cuss, or confer upon any political question." 

This third effort which Lee had made to bring about 
peace having disappeared, Lee went back to his post 
behind the trenches in which his army, now but a 
wraith, still held back the foe, in no small part by 
the awe which its valor and fortitude had inspired. 
Here, still obedient to the civil government, as he 
deemed it his duty to be, he held on until swept away 
by Grant's irresistible numbers ably thrown against 
him. And even then by a tragic fate he was the victim 
of the incompetence of the civil authorities. He had 
successfully accomplished one of the most difficult 
movements of his career. He had withdrawn his army 
by night from Grant's front extending against his lines 
for thirty-odd miles, in places so close that the move- 
ment could not be begun till the moon set. He had 
crossed the Appomattox twice and, marching past 
Grant's left, was well on his way to Danville when the 
disastrous consequence of civil incompetence overtook 



616 ROBERT E. LEE 

him. In the first place, as we have seen, a letter in 
which Lee had stated the condition of his army and his 
plans to the civil authorities had been left in Rich- 
mond and fell into the hands of the Union commander, 
thus apprising him fully of Lee's route and the desper- 
ate condition of his army. And secondly, when Lee 
reached Amelia Court House, where he had ordered 
that rations should meet his army, it was found that 
though they had been sent, the train carrying them had 
been ordered away again a few hours before his arrival. 
It used to be charged that this train was ordered back 
to Richmond to help take away the retiring government 
officials ; but this charge Mr. Davis indignantly denied, 
and no one has since believed it. As to the effect of 
this disaster we have Lee's own views given in his final 
report of the surrender at Appomattox : 

"... Not finding the supplies ordered to be placed 
there," he says, "nearly twenty-four hours were lost 
in endeavoring to collect in the country subsistence 
for men and horses. This delay was fatal and could 
not be retrieved." 

When Lee sheathed his sword the Confederate Gov- 
ernment vanished like a morning cloud. Of its policy, 
he declared, he knew nothing and "had no hand nor 
part in it." He was only a soldier, obeying his coun- 
try's laws, and striving with all his might to preserve 
the blessing of peace. 

With this report to the President of the Confederate 
States the Army of Northern Virginia passed into his- 
tory. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

LEE'S CLEMENCY 

As the years pass by, the military genius of Lee must 
be more and more restricted to the study of a class. 
His character will ever remain the precious possession 
of his kindred and his people. In all the annals of his 
race none has excelled it. 

Possibly Lee's chief, if not his one, fault as a soldier 
was that he was not always rigorous enough with his 
subordinates; that is, if such a thing be possible, he 
was too magnanimous. He took blame on himself 
where it should rightly have been adjudged to others. 
Yet, this weakness as a soldier but added to his nobility 
as a man, and it is as a man that we would now con- 
sider him. 

While many competent critics in his army were 
charging Longstreet with having been the cause of the 
disaster at Gettysburg, Lee gave no hint of dissatis- 
faction with him. His reports contain no suggestion 
that he had failed to secure his approval. He wrote 
him a letter such as only a man of noble nature could 
have written to an old comrade who had failed him. 
He showed him a magnanimity which was ill requited 
when Longstreet wrote his own story of the war. 

Among his characteristics his humanity stands forth 
to distinguish him forever from possibly nearly all his 

617 



618 ROBERT E. LEE 

noted contemporaries. Colonel Charles Marshall, of his 
staff, who knew him best among men, declares that he 
never put a spy to death, and the story is well known of 
his clemency in the case of a deserter who had been 
found guilty by a court-martial and condemned to death. 
It was during the terrible campaign of 1864, when the 
women at home wrote such heart-rending accounts of 
their want to their husbands in the field, that Lee was 
compelled to forbid the mails to be delivered. A soldier 
who had disappeared from his regiment and gone home 
was arrested and tried as a deserter. His defence was 
a letter which he had received from his wife, which 
showed that she and her children were starving. It 
was held insufficient, and he was sentenced to be shot. 
The case, however, was so pitiful that it was finally 
presented to General Lee. Lee's views on the mistaken 
mercy of reversing courts-martial in cases of desertion 
have been set forth. In this case, however, he wrote 
beneath the finding his approval, and then below this 
an order that the man should immediately rejoin his 
regiment. There were, of course, unhappily, other in- 
stances enough in which discipline had to be enforced, 
and when the exigency arose he was rock. But, as has 
been well said by Mr. Charles Francis Adams, possibly 
his surest and loftiest title to enduring fame was "his 
humanity in arms and his scrupulous regard for the 
most advanced rules of modern warfare." ^ 

An incident, small in itself but illustrative of the 
compassionate character of Lee, occurred during one 
of his fiercest battles. He was standing with officers 

' Address delivered at Lexington, Va., January 19, 1907. 



LEE'S CLEMENCY 619 

of his staff in the yard of a dwelling on an eminence, 
when the group attracted the attention of the enemy 
and a hot fire was directed on them. General Lee sug- 
gested to his companions to go to a less exposed spot, 
but he himself remained where he was. A little later, 
as he moved about, he stooped and picked up a young 
bird, and, walking across the yard, placed the fledgling 
on a limb. 

It was characteristic of him that ordinarily, wherever 
he might be, he slept in a tent, for fear of incommoding 
the occupants of the houses he might have taken for 
his head-quarters, and at times when he was inspecting 
the long lines from Richmond to Petersburg, he even 
hesitated to seek shelter at night in the camp of an 
acquaintance lest he might inconvenience him.^ On 
his return from Appomattox he, even at his brother's 
home, slept in a tent in his yard. 

We have seen how in the midst of the arduous duties 
of commander of the army, he took the trouble to carry 
out his father-in-law's directions about the manumis- 
sion of his slaves. He writes later, during the stress of 
war, to his eldest son: "... I hope we will be able to 
do something for the servants. I executed a deed of 
manumission embracing all the names sent me by 
your mother and some that I recollected, but as I had 
nothing to refer to but my memory, I fear many were 
omitted. It was my desire to manumit all the people 
of your grandfather, whether present on the several 
estates or not. I believe your mother only sent me 
the names of those present at W.^iite] H.[ouse] and 

' Long's "Lee," quoting Colonel Thomas H. Carter. 



620 ROBERT E. LEE 

Romancoke. Those that have left with the enemy 
may not require their manumission. Still, some may 
be found hereafter in the State, and, at any rate, I 
wished to give a complete list, and to liberate all to 
show that your grandfather's wishes, so far as I was 
concerned, had been fulfilled. ... I shall pay wages 
to Perry [his body-servant], and retain him until he or 
I can do better. You can do the same with Billy. The 
rest that are hired out had better be furnished with 
their papers and be let go. But what can be done with 
those at the W. H. and Romancoke? Those at and 
about Arlington can take care of themselves, I hope, 
and I have no doubt but all are gone who desire to do 
so. At any rate, I can do nothing for them now." ^ 

In another letter, dated March 31, 1863, he writes 
further, showing his solicitude about his freed servants. 
One he wishes a place gotten for on a railway; two 
others, who had been hired out, he advises to remain 
where they are till the end of the year, when they are 
to have their earnings devoted to their own benefit. 
"But what can be done," he asks, '^with poor little 
Jim? It would be cruel to turn him out on the world. 
He could not take care of himself." ^ 

This is an epitome of the old Virginian's relation to 
his servants, and it will be observed that this represen- 
tative of his class never speaks of them as his slaves, 
even in discussing intimately with his son their legal 
status. 

His love of children and his companionship with 

» Letter to General G. W. C. Lee, January 11, 1863. 
"Jones' "Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee," pp. 286, 287. 



LEE'S CLEMENCY 621 

them shine forth in his letters and mark the simplicity 
that is so often allied to true greatness. In one of his 
letters to his wife long before the war, when he was on 
duty in the West, he gives a glimpse of this tenderness 
toward children which ever distinguished him. He says 
of a ride he took: '^ . . I saw a number of little girls, 
all dressed up in their white frocks and pantalets, their 
hair plaited and tied up with ribbons, running and chas- 
ing each other in all directions. I counted twenty- 
three nearly the same size. As I drew up my horse to 
admire the spectacle, a man appeared at the door with 
the twenty-fourth in his arms. 'My friend,' said I, 
'are all these your children ?' 

'''Yes,' he said, 'and there are nine more in the 
house, and this is my youngest.' 

"Upon further inquiry, however, I found that they 
were only temporarily his. He said, however, that he 
had been admiring them before I came up, and just 
wished that he had a million of dollars, and that they 
were all his in reality. I do not think the eldest ex- 
ceeded seven or eight years old. It was the prettiest 
sight I have seen in the West, and, perhaps, in my 
life. ..." This love of children ever distinguished him. 

Such was the heart of this great captain, who, to 
some, seemed cold and aloof when, as Emerson says, 
genius was only protecting itself by solitude. 

Writing from before Petersburg, years after, to his 
wife of three little girls, the children of an old neighbor 
in happier days at Arlington, who had paid him a visit 
in his camp, each with a basket in which they had 
brought him fresh eggs, pickles, and a pair of socks. 



622 ROBERT E. LEE 

"I begged them," Lee said, "to bring me nothing but 
their kisses and to keep the eggs, corn, etc., for them- 
selves." 

Of Lee's tranquil mind, even amid the most difficult 
conditions, we have constant proof. No apparent dis- 
advantage of position, no threats or impending dangers, 
appear to have disturbed that equanimity which so 
marks him as among the great. 

While McClellan, accepting the wildest statements of 
'intelligent contrabands," was rating the force in his 
front at two and a half times its actual numbers and 
was throwing away precious weeks while he clamored 
for reinforcements, and while his successors often saw 
a vast army in their front whose shadows caused them 
much delay, Lee, from the first, even amid the deepest 
darkness of the situation, saw with a clearness which no 
gloom could obscure. Writing from his camp, during 
the Western Virginia campaign, he saj^s: ''The force of 
the enemy, estimated by prisoners captured, is put 
down at from 17,000 to 20,000. General Floyd thinks 
18,000. I do not think it exceeds 9,000 or 10,000, but 
it exceeds ours." ^ 

From camp near Orange Court House he writes on 
the eve of the battle of Second Manassas, under date 
of August 17, 1862: "General Pope says he is very 
strong and seems to feel so, for he is moving apparently 
up the Rapidan. I hope he will not prove stronger than 
we are. I learn since I have left that General McClellan 
has moved down the James River with his whole army, 

» Letter to Mrs. Lee, October 7, 1861; letter to his son, Major W. H. 
F. Lee, October 12, 1861. 



LEE'S CLEMENCY 623 

so we shall have busy times. Burnside and King, from 
Fredericksburg, have joined Pope, which, from their 
own report, has swelled Pope to 92,000. I do not be- 
lieve it, though I believe he is very big." 

''General Hooker," he wrote, ''is agitating some- 
thing on the other side, or, at all events, he is agitating 
his troops. . . . Yesterday he was marching his men 
up and down the river. ..." 

If Hooker prided himself on his fine army, Lee had 
no less confidence in his own, however outnumbered. 
"I agree with you," he wrote Hood, "in believing that 
our army would be invincible if properly organized 
and officered. There never were such men in an army 
before. They will go anywhere and do anything if 
properly led. But there is the difficulty — proper com- 
manders. Where can they be obtained?" ^ 

It has been customary to think of piety as the peculiar 
attribute of Jackson, the Puritan in type, rather than of 
Lee, the cavalier. But, if possible, Lee was even more 
pious than his great lieutenant. In fact, both were 
men who, in the early prime of their manhood, conse- 
crated themselves to God, and thenceforth served Him 
with a single heart. It shines forth in every page they 
ever penned, in every act they ever performed. It 
was the basis of their character; it formed the foun- 
dation of that wonderful poise which, amid the most 
difficult and arduous situations, left them the supreme 
tranquillity which was the atmosphere in which their 
powers found vitality. No one can familiarize himself 
with Lee's life without seeing that he was a man con- 

' Letter to General J. B. Hood, May 21, 1863. 



624 ROBERT E. LEE 

secrated to the work of his divine Master, and amid all 
conditions possessing a mind stayed on Him. 

Not Cromwell's army was more religious than that 
which followed Lee, and the great Protector was not 
so pious as the great captain who led the Army of 
Northern Virginia. 

The principle on which he acted was stated in one of 
his letters. ''We are all in the hands of a kind God," 
he wrote, *'who will do for us what is best, and more 
than we deserve, and we have only to endeavor to de- 
serve more and to do our duty to Him and to ourselves. 
May we all deserve His mercy, His care, and His pro- 
tection." ^ 

Such was the man to whom first Virginia, and later 
the entire South, confided the leadership of her soldiery, 
and on whom they laid the burden of their destiny. 

His advice to his youngest son, whom he had advised 
on leaving college to enlist in a good company, was 
characteristic of him: ''To be obedient to all authority, 
and to do his duty in everything, great or small." ^ 

It was also characteristic alike of him and of the 
soldiery of the South that he should have refused to 
procure for this son a commission, as long afterward he 
promptly discountenanced the idea of promoting his 
eldest son (though a soldier so accomplished that he 
wished for him as his chief of staff) over the heads of 
officers who had served under him and proved their 
capacity under his eye. 

"I do not think," says the former, in his interesting 

* Letter of September 1, 1856; cited in Jones' "Lee," p. 8L 

* "Recollections of General Lee," by Captain R. E. Lee. 



LEE'S CLEMENCY 625 

''Recollections" of his father, ''that it ever occurred to 
my father to have me, or rather get me, a position in 
the army. I know it never occurred to me, nor did I 
ever hear at that time, or afterward, from any one that 
I might have been entitled to better rank because of 
my father's prominence in Virginia and in the Confed- 
eracy." ^ 

It was not until that son had fought as a private 
through the valley campaigns of Jackson, the battles 
around Richmond, the Maryland campaign, and had 
distinguished himself,^ that he received the promotion 
to the staff of his brother. General William H. F. Lee. 

Indeed, among the troubles with which Lee had to 
contend were the efforts made by politicians in the civil 
government to procure commissions and promotions 
for their constituents, and the delay experienced in 
getting his recommendations for promotion for merit 
acted on. 

The fact constitutes one of the few complaints in his 
letters, and he set the example by steadfastly setting 
his face against any favoritism toward his own family. 
His two sons, who became generals, were both officers 
in the old army and were both in the retreat to Appo- 
mattox until one of them was captured, with five other 
general officers and some 6,000 men, at Sailor's Creek, 
in one of the last fights of the war. Of their character 
some idea may be formed from the fact that when one 
of them. General William H. F. Lee, was held as a 
hostage under sentence of death, the other. General 

* "Recollections of General Lee," by R. E. Lee. 

^ Moore's " Recollections of a Cannoneer under Jackson." 



626 ROBERT E. LEE 

G. W. C. Lee, wrote, asking to be accepted as a hostage 
in his stead, placing the offer on the ground that his 
brother had a wife and child, while he, his equal in 
rank and the eldest son, was unmarried. 

Of his son's confinement under sentence as a hostage, 
which, the father says, was ''grievous" to him, Lee 
writes to his other son. ''I had seen in the papers the 
intention announced by the Federal Government of 
holding him as a hostage for the two captains selected 
to be shot. If it is right to shoot those men this should 
make no difference in their execution; but I have not 
thought it right to shoot them, and differ in my ideas 
from most of our people on the subject of reprisal. 
Sometimes I know it to be necessary, but it should not 
be resorted to at all times, and in our case policy dic- 
tates that it should be avoided whenever possible." * 

Happy the people that can produce such a father 
and such sons! 

It is told of Sidney, that, when wounded and perish- 
ing of thirst, some one brought him water, and he or- 
dered it given to a dying soldier, whose need was greater 
than his. Lee's army was full of soldiers who would 
have done that which gave Sidney fame, and the same 
thing may be said of the better element of the Army 
of the Potomac. Such was the temper and character 
of the men who followed Lee, and such was the temper 
and character of their beloved commander, whom they 
loved to call in affectionate phrase, "Marse Robert." 
He was their idol and their ideal, and his impress was 
stamped on his army. 

> Letter to General G. W. C. Lee, August 7, 1863. 



LEE'S CLEMENCY 627 

The Master whom he so faithfully and humbly tried 
to serve, whose precepts were ever in his heart and 
whose spirit shone ever in his life, had laid down for 
him the law as had His forerunner and prophet: '^And 
":o the soldiers he said, Do violence to no man." 

This high rule, like all others of his divine Master, 
Lee ever followed, and, so far as possible, inculcated on 
his army, by whom, to their eternal honor be it said, 
the noble example was nobly followed. Unhappily for 
the world, and for the future reputation of some who 
otherwise might as able soldiers have won the admira- 
tion of a whole people, rather than of a mere section 
of that people, though McClellan, McDowell, Burnside, 
and numberless gentlemen who followed them con- 
ducted war on high principles, it was not the invariable 
rule among all commanders. 

Butler had damned himself to everlasting fame by 
orders and acts in Louisiana which no soldier can think 
of without a blush. ^ Hunter, in despite of expostula- 
tions, had burnt his way through the beautiful valley 
where Lee was to find his last resting place, and had 
left in his track the scarred and blackened ruins of 
countless dwellings. To the honor of the brave men he 
commanded it is said that he "had to deprive forty of 
his commissioned officers of their conomands before he 
could carry into execution his infamous orders." ^ Even 



'In his infamous "Order 28" he had ordered that any woman in 
New Orleans who should " by word, or gesture, or movement insult or 
show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, should be 
regarded and treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." 

2 "Official Report of History Com., Grand Camp C. V.," in "The 
Confederate Cause," p. 103. 



628 ROBERT E. LEE 

Halleck declared his action "barbarous." ^ It was re- 
served for Sherman, possibly the second greatest gen- 
eral on the Northern side, to reverse most completely 
the advances of civilization and hark back almost to 
the ferocious methods of mediaevalism. To find the 
proof of this, one has no need to go outside of this 
officer's own recorded words. 

"War is hell," he was quoted long after as saying. 
He did more than all others to make it so. He ruth- 
lessly devastated, not only for the needs of his army 
and to deprive his enemy of subsistence, but to horrify 
^.and appall. He made war not only on men, but on 
' ^ women and children. He shelled defenceless towns 
which had net an armed man in them and had offered 
to surrender. 

"In nearly all his despatches after he had reached the 
sea," says Rhodes, an historian from his State, who is 
his apologist and his admirer, "he gloated over the de- 
struction of property." ^ 

He gloated over the havoc he wrought, first, in an- 
ticipation, as he wrote, how he could "make a wreck of 
the country from Chattanooga to Atlanta, including the 
latter city," ^ and again, how he could "make Georgia 
howl"; * next, in the act of its perpetration, as he issued 
his orders for his army to "forage liberally on the coun- 
try," and expressly forbade his officers to give receipts 
for property taken ; authorized the wanton destruction 
of mills and houses; and while subordinate officers, like 

» Sherman's "Memoirs," II, p. 129. 
2 Rhodes' "History of the United States," vol. V, p. 22. 
=» Official Records, vol. XXXIX, part 2, p. 202. 
*Ibid., parts, p. 1G2. 



I 



LEE'S CLEMENCY 629 

Howard and Cox and Schofield, were writhing under 
the robberies of defenceless women, extending even to 
the tearing of rings from their fingers, he chuckled over 
the robberies committed by his men — who quoted his 
orders to his face — and reviewed his "bummers," an 
organized corps of robbers, who have never had their 
counterpart since the Free Companies passed from 
the stage under the awakening conscience of modern 
Europe, 

If these are strong words they are largely taken from 
his own writings. 

He sent an express message to the corps commander, 
General Davis, at General Howell Cobb's plantation, 
"to explain whose plantation it was and instruct him 
to spare nothing." ^ This was but warring on women, 
for General Howell Cobb was far away at his post of 
duty in command of his brigade in Virginia and his 
brother, General Thomas Cobb, was in his honored 
grave two years ere this, having fallen at the foot of 
Marye's Heights, as a brave man falls, holding back 
brave men. "I would not restrain the army," Sher- 
man wrote coolly, "lest its vigor and energy should be 
impaired." ^ 

Speaking of the burning of Columbia, which Sher- 
man wrote his brother he had in his report "dis- 
tinctly charged to General Wade Hamilton," he adds, 
"I confess I did so pointedly to shake the faith of his 
people in him." ' A distinguished historian from his 
own State has declared of this destruction of Columbia, 

^ Sherman's "Memoirs," II, p. 185. 

Uhid., II, p. 255. ^lUd., II, p. 287. 



630 ROBERT E. LEE 

a defenceless city which had surrendered, that ''it was 
the most monstrous barbarity of this barbarous march. 
Before his movements began, General Sherman had 
begged permission to turn his army loose in South Caro- 
lina and devastate it. He used this permission to the 
full. He protested that he did not wage war upon 
women and children. But under the operations of his 
orders the last morsel of food was taken from hundreds 
of destitute families that his soldiers might feast in 
needless and riotous abundance. Before his eyes rose, 
day after day, the mournful clouds of smoke on every 
side that told of old people and their grandchildren 
driven in mid-winter, from the only roofs that were to 
shelter them, by the flames which the wantonness of 
his soldiers had kindled. Yet, if a single soldier was 
punished for a single outrage or theft during that entire 
movement we have found no mention of it in all the 
voluminous records of the march." ^ 

Place Lee's general order from Chambersburg on in- 
vading Pennsylvania beside Sherman's correspondence 
with Halleck, and let posterity judge thereby the char- 
acter of the commanders. Halleck, chief of staff and 
military adviser to President Lincoln, writes to Sher- 
man, ''Should you capture Charleston, I hope that by 
some accident the place might be destroyed, and if a 
little salt should be sown upon its site it might pre- 
vent the growth of future crops of nullification and 
secession," and Sherman replies,^ "I will bear in mind 



* "Ohio in the War," by Hon. AVhitelaw Reid. 

^Despatch of December 24, 1864. Sherman's "Memoirs," II, pp. 
223, 227, 228. 



LEE'S CLEMENCY 631 

your hint as to Charleston, and do not think salt will 
be necessary. When I move on, the Fifteenth Corps 
will be on the right wing, and their position will 
bring them naturally into Charleston first, and if you 
have watched the history of that corps you have re- 
marked that they generally do up their work pretty 
well." 

While this general was giving orders to burn mills 
and destroy all food sources on which non-combatants 
depended for life, and to convey prisoners first, or if 
prisoners were wanting, then non-combatant inhabi- 
tants, over all bridges and other places suspected of 
being mined, and ''could hardly help laughing at their 
stepping so gingerly along the road where it was sup- 
posed sunken torpedoes might explode at each step"; ^ 
and while even Grant, not yet risen to his last splendid 
act of magnanimity, as he was brought to do in the long 
vigils before Petersburg, was expressing his hope to 
Hunter that his troops would "eat out Virginia clear 
and clean, as far as they could go, so that crows flying 
over it for the balance of the season would have to carry 
their provender with them"; ^ Lee, as he marched into 
Pennsylvania, issued orders to his troops to remember 
that they made war only on armed men, and that no 
greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it 
the whole South, than the perpetration of barbarous 
outrages on the innocent and defenceless. This whole 
order can never be too frequently repeated. It gives 
the man as he was. 

> Sherman's "Memoirs," II, p. 194. 

2 Official Records, vol. XXXVII, part 2, pp. 300, 301. 



632 ROBERT E. LEE 

Hdqrs. Army of Northern Va., 

Chambersburg, Pa., June 27, 1863. 
Genl. Order, No. 72. 

The commanding general has observed with marked 
satisfaction the conduct of the troops on the march, 
and confidently anticipates results commensurate with 
the high spirit they have manifested. No troops could 
have displayed greater fortitude or better performed 
the arduous marches of the past ten days. Their con- 
duct in other respects has, with few exceptions, been 
in keeping with their character as soldiers and entitles 
them to approbation and praise. 

There have, however, been instances of forgetfulness 
on the part of some that they have in keeping the yet 
unsullied reputation of the army, and that the duties 
exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not 
less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in 
our own. The commanding general considers that no 
greater disgrace would befall the army, and through it 
our whole people, than the perpetration of the bar- 
barous outrages upon the innocent and defenceless, 
and the wanton destruction of private property, that 
have marked the course of the enemy in our own 
country. Such proceedings not only disgrace the per- 
petrators and all connected with them, but are sub- 
versive of the discipline and efficiency of the army 
and obstructive to the ends of our present movements. 
It must be remembered that we make war only on 
armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the 
wrong our people have suffered without lowering our- 
selves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been 
excited by the atrocities of our enemy, and offending 
against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without 
whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in 
vain. 



LEE'S CLEMENCY 633 

The commanding general, therefore, earnestly ex- 
horts the troops to abstain with most scrupulous care 
from unnecessary or wanton injury to private prop- 
erty, and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and 
bring to summary punishment all who shall in any 
way offend against the orders on this subject. 

R. E. Lee, General. 

Colonel Freemantle, of the British army, who was 
along with the army, says: "I saw no straggling into 
the houses ; nor were any of the inhabitants disturbed 
or annoyed by the soldiers. I went into Chambers- 
burg and witnessed the singular good behavior of the 
troops toward the citizens. To one who has seen the 
ravages of the Northern troops in Southern towns, this 
forbearance seems most commendable and surprising." 

In this he is sustained by the testimony of a multi- 
tude of reliable witnesses.^ It is an error to imagine 
that Lee was lax in the enforcement of his orders. It 
was only with those higher officers whom he could not 
replace that he overlooked failure to comply with his 
orders. An excellent illustration of this is the story 
of his having sent for a colonel of artillery whose com- 
mand had rendered conspicuous service in a battle a 
few days before. It was supposed that the summons 
was for the purpose of complimenting the colonel. 
But on his arrival all he received was a reprimand from 

^ Colonel William Nelson, of the artillery, on the retreat from Gettys- 
burg, witnessed a cow break out of her pasture and join the beef herd 
which was passing by. The farmer's wife was in much distress. Riding 
back, Colonel Nelson directed Captain Woolfork, who was near by, to 
order one of his lieutenants to take a squad of reliable men and cut 
the cow out of the herd and return her to her mistress. 



634 ROBERT E. LEE 

the general for having allowed some of his men to ride 
on his guns, which was against orders. The colonel 
used to say that he thought of replying that if the 
general had seen his men in the battle next day he 
would have seen many of those same men lying un- 
der the guns. But he did not say it. Few men in the 
Army of Northern Virginia, whatever their devotion 
to "Marse Robert/' ventured to reply to him. They 
stood mightily in awe of him. 

His orders against depredation, even in the enemy's 
country, were rigidly enforced, and having seen a soldier 
running away from a farm yard with a stolen pig, he is 
said to have promptly ordered his execution. Whether 
this story be authentic or not, it is unquestioned that 
he was stern in enforcing discipline in this regard. 
The story is known how, on being told by a bare- 
headed prisoner in reply to the question, "Where is 
your hat?" that a soldier had taken it, he had a search 
made and the hat returned. 

In his admirable "Review of the Gettysburg Cam- 
paign," Colonel David G. Mcintosh, whose battalion 
was among the most noted for service on that fatal field, 
and who was in the fight from the first morning, re- 
lates that when on the retreat to the Potomac his com- 
mand reached St. James's College, it was given the first 
opportunity to rest and cook rations which it had had 
since the struggle began on the first day. Having gone 
into camp in a grove, he was so worn out that he flung 
himself on the ground and was at once asleep. He was 
soon aroused by a message that General Lee wished to 
see him, and on making his way to where the general 



LEE'S CLEMENCY 635 

was, he was received "with great austerity of manner" 
and suddenly "awoke to the fact that a long row of 
camp-fires were blazing brightly in full view, piled high 
with fence rails." Pointing to the fires. General Lee 
inquired if he had received "Order No. 72." He re- 
plied that he had, and that the order had been duly 
published. "Looking at me for a moment," continues 
Colonel Mcintosh, "he said: 'Then, sir, you must not 
only have them published, but you must see that they 
are obeyed,' and with a bow and majestic wave of the 
hand, he turned and rode away, leaving me decidedly 
crestfallen." 

Illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely to show 
that, while he fought with all his might, he fought only 
armed enemies, and, whatever the provocation, bore 
himself toward others with knightly consideration. 

It is a record of general and of men of which the 
South may well boast and of which the whole nation 
will some day be proud. 



CHAPTER XXV 
LEE IN DEFEAT 

And now, having endeavored to picture Lee during 
those glorious campaigns which must, to the future 
student of military skill, place him among the first 
captains of history, I shall not invite attention further 
to Lee the soldier — to Lee the strategist — to Lee the 
victorious, but to a greater Lee — to Lee the defeated. 
As glorious as were these campaigns, it is on the last 
act of the drama — the retreat from Petersburg, the sur- 
render at Appomattox, and the dark period that fol- 
lowed that surrender — that we must look to see him at 
his best. His every act, his every word, showed how 
completely he had surrendered himself to Duty, and 
with what implicit obedience he followed the command 
of that 

''Stem daughter of the voice of God." 

"Are you sanguine of the result of the war?" asked 
Bishop Wilmer of him in the closing days of the struggle. 
His reply was : 

"At present I am not concerned with results. God's 
will ought to be our aim, and I am quite contented 
that His designs should be accomplished and not mine." 

On that last morning when his handful of worn and 
starving veterans had made their last charge, to find 
themselves shut in by ranks of serried steel, hemmed 

636 



LEE IN DEFEAT 637 

in by Grant's entire army, he faced the decree of Fate 
with as much constancy as though that decree were 
success, not doom. 

''Wliat will history say of the surrender of an army 
in the field?" asked an officer of his staff in passionate 
grief. 

''Yes, I know they will say hard things of us; they 
will not understand that we were overwhelmed by 
numbers; but that is not the question, colonel. The 
question is, is it right to surrender this army? If it is 
right, then I will take all of the responsibility." 

It was ever the note of duty that he sounded. 

''You will take with you," he said to his army in 
his farewell address, "the satisfaction that proceeds 
from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed." 

"We are conscious that we have humbly tried to do 
our duty," he said, a year or more after the war, when 
the clouds hung heavy over the South ; " we may, there- 
fore, with calm satisfaction trust in God and leave 
results to Him." 

The sun which has shone in the morning, but has 
become obscured by clouds in the afternoon, sometimes 
breaks forth and at its setting shines with a greater 
splendor than it knew even at high noon. 

So here. Sheathing his stainless sword, surrender- 
ing in the field the remnant of an army that had once 
been the most redoubtable body of fighting men of 
the century, the greatest captain, the noblest gentle- 
man of our time, expecting to slip into the darkness of 
oblivion, suddenly stepped forth from the gloom of de- 
feat into the splendor of perpetual fame. 



638 ROBERT E. LEE ^^| 

I love to think of Grant as he appeared that April 
day at Appomattox: the simple soldier, the strenuous 
fighter who, though thrashed, was always ready to fight 
again; who, now though he had achieved the prize 
for which he had fought so hard and h*ad paid so dearly, 
was so modest and so unassuming that but for his 
shoulder-straps and that yet better mark of rank, his 
generosity, he might not have been known as the vic- 
tor. Southerners generally have long forgiven Grant 
all else for the magnanimity that he showed that day 
to Lee. By his orders no salutes of joy were fired, no 
public marks of exultation over his fallen foe were 
allowed. History contains no finer example of great- 
ness. Not Alexander in his generous youth excelled 
him. 

Yet, it is not more to the victor that Posterity will 
turn her gaze than to the vanquished, her admiration 
at the glory of the conqueror wellnigh lost in amaze- 
ment at the dignity of the conquered. 

Men who saw the defeated general when he came 
forth from the chamber where he had signed the ar- 
ticles of capitulation say that he paused a moment as 
his eyes rested once more on the Virginia hills, smote his 
hands together as though in some excess of inward 
agony, then mounted his gray horse, Traveller, and 
rode calmly away. 

If that was the very Gethsemane of his trials, yet 
he must have had then one moment of supreme, if 
chastened, joy. As he rode quietly down the lane 
leading from the scene of capitulation, he passed into 
view of his men — of such as remained of them. The 



LEE IN DEFEAT 039 

news of the surrender had got abroad and they were 
waiting, grief -stricken and dejected, upon the hill-sides, 
when they caught sight of their old commander on the 
gray horse. Then occurred one of the most notable 
scenes in the history of war. In an instant they were 
about him, bare-headed, with tear-wet faces; throng- 
ing him, kissing his hand, his boots, his saddle ; weep- 
ing ; cheering him amid their tears ; shouting his name 
to the very skies. He said: "Men, we have fought 
through the war together. I have done my best for 
you. My heart is too full to say more." 

The cheers were heard afar off over the hills where the 
victorious army lay encamped, and awakened some 
anxiety. It was a sound they well knew: 

"The voice once heard through Shiloh's woods, 
And Chickamauga's soHtudes, 
The fierce South cheering on her sons." 

It was reported in some of the Northern papers that 
it was the sound of jubilation at the surrender. But 
it was not. It was the voice of jubilation, yet not for 
surrender: but for the captain who had surrendered 
their muskets but was still the commander of their 
hearts. 

This is Lee's final victory and the highest tribute to 
the South: that the devotion of the South to him was 
greater in the hour of defeat than in that of victory. 
It is said that Napoleon was adored by the men of 
France, but hated by the women. It was not so with 
Lee. No victor ever came home to receive more signal 
evidences of devotion than this defeated general. 



040 ROBERT E. LEE 

Richmond was in mourning. Since the Union army 
had entered her gates, every house had been closed as 
though it were the house of death. One afternoon, a 
few days after the surrender, Lee, on his gray horse. 
Traveller, attended by two or three officers, crossed the 
James and rode quietly up the street to his home on 
Franklin Street, where he dismounted. That evening 
it was noised abroad that General Lee had arrived; 
he had been seen to enter his house. Next morning 
the houses were open as usual ; life began to flow in its 
accustomed channels. Those who were there have 
said that when General Lee returned they felt as safe 
as if he had had his whole army at his back. 

His first recorded words on his arrival were a tribute 
to his successful opponent. "General Grant has acted 
with magnanimity," he said to some who spoke of the 
victor with bitterness. It was the keynote to his after 
life. 

Indeed, from this record a few facts stand forth be- 
yond all others: Lee's nobility and genius; the forti- 
tude of the Southern people; Grant's resolution and 
magnanimity, and the infinite valor of the American 
soldier. 

Over forty years have gone by since that day in April 
when Lee, to avoid further useless sacrifice of life, sur- 
rendered himself and all that remained of the Army of 
Northern Virginia and gave his parole d'honneur to 
bear arms no more against the United States. To him, 
who with prescient mind had long borne in his bosom 
knowledge of the exhausted resources of the Confeder- 
acy, and had seen his redoubtable army, under the 



LEE IN DEFEAT 641 

''policy of attrition," dwindle away to a mere ghost of 
its former self, it might well appear that he had failed, 
and, if he ever thought of his personal reputation, that 
he had lost the soldier's dearest prize; that Fame had 
turned her back and Fate usurped her place. Thence- 
forth he who had been the leader of armies, whose 
glorious achievements had filled the world, who had 
been the prop of a high-hearted nation's hope, was to 
walk the narrow by-way of private life, defeated, im- 
poverished, and possibly misunderstood. 

But to us who have survived for the space of more 
than a generation, how different it appears. We know 
that time, the redresser of wrongs, is steadily righting 
the act of unkind Fate; and Fame, firmly established in 
her high seat, is ever placing a richer laurel on his brow. 

Yea, ride away, thou defeated general ! Ride through 
the broken fragments of thy shattered army, ride 
through thy war-wasted land, amid thy desolate and 
stricken people. But know that thou art riding on 
Fame's highest way: 

"This day shall see 
Thy head wear sunlight and thy feet touch stars." 



CHAPTER XXVI 
AFTER THE WAR 

The sternest test of Lee's character was yet to come. 
Only those who went through it can know the depth of 
the humihation in which, during the next few years, 
mahgnity, with ignorance for ally, strove to steep the 
South. 

Out of it Lee came without a trace of rancor or of 
bitterness. In all the annals of our race no man has\ 
ever shown a nobler or more Christian spirit. i 

Lincoln, who was of Southern blood and whose pas- 
sion was a reunited Union, was in his grave, slain by 
a madman, and after life's fitful fever was sleeping 
well, his last message being one of peace and good-will. 
His successor began by flinging himself into the arms 
of those who had hated Lincoln most. 

On the 29th of May President Johnson issued a 
proclamation of amnesty, but General Lee, with all 
others of rank, was excluded from its operation, and 
he was indicted for treason by a grand jury, composed 
partly of negroes, especially selected for the purpose of 
returning indictments against him and Mr. Davis. 
There were those who stood proudly aloof and gave no 
sign of desiring reinstatement as citizens. Some scorn- 
fully declared their resolution to live and die without 
accepting parole. Not so the broad-minded and wise 
Lee. He immediately wrote (on June 13) to the Presi- 

642 



AFTER THE WAR 643 

dent, applying for the "benefits and full restoration of 
all rights and privileges extended to those included in 
the terms of the proclamation." This application he 
enclosed on the same day in a letter to General Grants 
informing him that he was ready to meet any charges 
that might be preferred against him and did not wish 
to avoid trial, but that he had supposed that the officers 
and men of the Army of Northern Virginia were by the 
terms of surrender protected by the United States 
Government from molestation so long as they con- 
formed to its conditions. 

Grant immediately rose to the demand of the occa- 
sion — as he had a way of doing in great emergencies. 
He informed General Lee that his understanding of 
the convention at Appomattox was identical with his ; 
and he is said to have threatened Johnson with the 
surrender of the command of the army unless the 
indictment were quashed and the convention honora- 
bly observed. 

The assassination of Lincoln had played perfectly 
into the hands of the radical element of his party, which 
had fought him with virulence, and now turned the 
outbreak of popular vengeance at the North to their 
own profit. They surpassed Johnson, and Johnson, 
finding himself confronted by an ever-strengthening 
phalanx of enemies within his own party, the same who 
had fought Lincoln so bitterly, enlarged by the new 
contingent of his personal foes, soon, for his own 
reasons, underwent a change of heart. From de- 
nouncing against the South measures that should 
"make treason odious," he began to speak of the South 



644 ROBERT E. LEE 

to Southerners in a more conciliatory manner. Gov- 
ernor Letcher, of Virginia, who had been arrested, was 
treated in Washington with kindness and considera- 
tion. It was on learning of this that General Lee de- 
clared his opinion that the decision of war having been 
against the South, it was "the part of wisdom to ac- 
quiesce in the result, and of candor to recognize the 
fact." The interests of the State of Virginia, he said, 
were the same as those of the United States. Its 
prosperity would rise or fall with the welfare of the 
country. The duty of its citizens then appeared to 
him too plain to admit of doubt. He urged that all 
should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects 
of war and to restore the blessings of peace. That they 
should remain, if possible, in the country; promote 
harmony and good feeling; qualify themselves to vote 
and elect to the State and general legislatures wise 
and patriotic men who would devote their abilities to 
the interests of the country and the healing of all dis- 
sensions. "I have," he asserted, "invariably recom- 
mended this course since the cessation of hostilities, 
and have endeavored to practise it myself." ^ 

From this time he gave all the weight of his great 
name to the complete re-establishment of the Union, 
and as his old soldiers followed and obeyed him on the 
field of battle, so now the whole South followed him 
in peace. Only the South knows as yet what the 
Union owes to Lee, 

Happily, as we know, his serene soul, lifted too high 
to be flisturbed by any storms of doubt, was untroubled 

* Letter of August 28, 1865, to ex-Govemor Letcher. 



AFTER THE WAR 645 

by any question born of his failure. "I did nothing 
more," he said to General Hampton, one of his most 
gallant lieutenants, "than my duty required of me. 
I could have taken no other course without dishonor, 
and if it were all to be done over again, I should act in 
precisely the same manner." 

Thus, in the lofty calm of a mind conscious of hav- 
ing tried faithfully to follow ever the right, of having 
obeyed without question the command of duty, in sim- 
ple reliance on the goodness of God, the great captain 
passed the brief evening of his life, trying, by his con- 
stant precept and example, to train the young men of 
the South as Christian gentlemen. 

A story was told just after the war which illustrates 
the devotion of Lee's old soldiers to their defeated 
general. 

Not long after the surrender, a soldier rang at Gen- 
eral Lee's door and called for the general. "General," 
said he, as General Lee entered, "I'm one of your sol- 
diers, and I've come here as the representative of four 
of my comrades who are too ragged and dirty to ven- 
ture to see you. We are all Virginians, general, from 
Roanoke County, and they sent me here to see you on 
a little business. They've got our President in prison, 
and now — they — talk — about — arresting — you. And, 
general, we can't stand — we'll never stand and see that. 
Now, general, we five men have got about two hundred 
and fifty acres of land in Roanoke — very good land, 
too, it is, sir — and if you'll come up there and live, I've 
come to offer you our land, all of it, and we five men 
will work as your field hands, and you'll have very little 



646 ROBERT E. LEE 

trouble in managing it with us to help you. And, gen- 
eral, there are near about a hundred of us left in old 
Roanoke, and they could never take you there, for we 
could hide you in the hollows of the mountains, and the 
last man of us would die in your defence." 

With a great deal of delicacy he went on to suggest 
that the ladies of General Lee's family would lack 
society on a lonely mountain farm, but said that the 
Springs were hard by, and that out of the proceeds of 
the farm General Lee and his family could afford to 
spend all theii summers there and thus find the society 
which these devoted field-hands did not dare to offer. 

General Lee was, of course, forced to decline; but 
he would not allow the brave fellow to depart until he 
was better clad than when he came in.* 

He was much disturbed about this time by the ten- 
dency of some of his old friends in their despair to emi- 
grate from the South. That constant soul knew no 
defeat, much less despair, and he had not despaired 
of the South. He protested against leaving the State 
for any reason, avowing his unalterable belief in the 
duty of every man to remain and bear his part in what- 
ever trials might befall. "The thought of abandoning 
the country and all that must be left in it," he wrote, 
''is abhorrent to my feelings, and I prefer to struggle 
for its restoration and share its fate rather than to give 
up all as lost, and Virginia has need for all her sons." ' 
And this devotion he exemplified to the fullest extent 
in his life. 

' George W. Bagby's "Old Virginia Gentleman," p. 62. 
* Letter to Commodore M. F. Maury, September 8, 1865. 



AFTER THE WAR 647 

The war had scarcely ceased and his condition of 
narrow circumstances become known, when offers of 
places of honor and profit began to come to him : offers 
of the presidency of insurance companies and of other 
industrial enterprises — proposals that he should allow 
his name to be used for the highest office in the gift of 
the State ; even offers from admirers in the old country 
of an asylum on that side of the water, where a hand- 
some estate was tendered him, as a tribute of admira- 
tion, so that he could spend the residue of his life in 
peace and comfort. 

His reply to all these allurements was that which 
we now know was the only one he could make : a gra- 
cious but irrevocable refusal. During the war, when a 
friend had suggested to him the probability that the 
people of the South would demand that he should be 
their president, he had promptly and decisively de- 
clared that he would never accept such a position. So 
now, when the governorship of Virginia was proposed 
to him, he firmly refused to consider it. With the 
same firmness he rejected all proposals to provide 
him with honorable commercial positions at a high 
salary. 

On one of these occasions he was approached with a 
tender of the presidency of an insurance company at a 
salary of $50,000 a year. He declined it on the ground 
that it was work with which he was not familiar. 
"But, general," said the gentleman who represented 
the insurance company, "you will not be expected 
to do any work; what we wish is the use of your 



648 ROBERT E. LEE 

"Do you not think/' said General Lee, "that if my 
name is worth $50,000 a year, I ought to be ver^'- care- 
ful about taking care of it?" 

Amid the commercialism of the present age tliis 
sounds as refreshing as the oath of a knight of the 
Round Table. 

Defeated in one warfare, he was still a captain mili- 
tant in the service of Duty : Duty that, like the moon, 
often shows her darkened face to her votary, though 
in the future she may beam with radiance. 

Duty now appeared to him to send her summons from 
a little mountain town in which was a classical school 
which Washington had endowed, and Lee, turning 
from all offers of wealth and ease, obeyed her call. 

"They are offering my father everything," said one 
of his daughters, "but the only thing he will accept: 
a place to earn honest bread while engaged in some use- 
ful work." That speech, made to a trustee of the in- 
stitution referred to, brought Lee the offer of the presi- 
dency of Washington College at a salary of $1,500 a 
year; and after some hesitation, due to his fear that 
his association with an institution might in the state 
of political feeling then existing prove an injury rather 
than a benefit to it, he accepted it. So poor were the 
people that Judge Brockenborough, the trustee who 
bore the invitation, had to borrow a suit of clothes from 
a friend to make himself presentable. 

Thus, the first captain of his time, and almost, if 
not quite, the most famous man in the world, with 
offers that might well, in that hour of trial, have allured 
even him with all his modesty, turned his back on the 



AFTER THE WAR 649 

world, and following the lamp with which Duty ap- 
peared to light his way, rode quietly to that little 
mountain town in Rockbridge County to devote the 
remainder of his life to fitting the sons of his old soldiers 
to meet the exactions of the coming time. On his old 
war horse he rode into Lexington alone, one afternoon 
in the early autumn, and, after a hush of reverent 
silence at his first appearance, was greeted on the streets 
by his old soldiers with the far-famed rebel yell which 
he had heard last as he rode down the lane from 
Appomattox. 

Ah ! ride on alone, old man, with Duty at thy bridle- 
bit: behind thee is the glory of thy military career; 
before thee is the transcendent fame of thy future. 
Thou shalt abide there henceforth; there shall thy 
ashes repose ; but thou shalt make of that little town a 
shrine to which pilgrims shall turn with softened eyes 
so long as men admire virtue and the heart aspires to 
the ideal of Duty. 

He was sworn in as president on the 2d of October, 
1865, in the presence of a few professors and friends, 
and thenceforth his life was devoted to the new service 
he had entered on with the same zeal with which he 
always applied himself to the duty before him. 

In the winter of 1865-6, when the radical element 
that had secured control of the government at Washing- 
ton were reaching out in every direction to try to find 
some evidence that would implicate Mr. Davis and 
General Lee in the conspiracy to murder Mr. Lincoln, 
General Lee was, with many others, summoned to 
Washington to appear before the committee of the 



650 ROBERT E. LEE 

Congress having the investigation in charge. His ex- 
amination covered a wide range and throws so much 
light, not only on his character, but on the situation 
at that time, that it justifies giving a summary- of the 
whole and its most important parts in full/ His 
answers are a complete refutation of the idea held — 
possibly even now — by many, that the reconstruction 
measures adopted by the radical wing of the party 
whom Lincoln's death had brought in power had some 
justification. It had not a shred. 

In reply to direct questions by his inquisitors as to 
what was the state of feeling toward the government 
of the United States of the "secessionists" in Virginia, 
he stated that he had been "living very retired" in 
Lexington for the last five months and had "had but 
little communication with politicians"; that he knew 
nothing save from his own observation, and such facts 
as had come to his knowledge; that he did not know 
of a single person who either felt or contemplated any 
resistance or opposition to the government of the 
United States; that he believed that the people of the 
South entirely acquiesced in the government of the 
United States, and were for co-operating with Presi- 
dent Johnson in his policy of reconstruction, in the 
wisdom of which they had great confidence, and to 
which they looked forward as a hope of restoration. 
He believed that they expected to pay their share of 
the taxes levied by the government, including the war 
debt, and had never heard of any opposition to such 
payment, or of their making any distinction between 

* Report of Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 39th C!ong., p. 133. 



AFTER THE WAR 651 

that and other just debts. Indeed, he believed; from 
his knowledge of the people of Virginia, that they would 
be willing to pay the Confederate debt also, though he 
thought the people generally looked upon it as lost 
entirely. 

This was far from what his inquisitors wished to hear, 
and they pressed him along other lines, among them as 
to the feeling of the "secessionists" in Virginia toward 
the freedmen, whom they were supposed to be oppress- 
ing. In reply, he declared, what every one now knows 
to have been the fact, that every one with whom he 
associated expressed the kindest feelings toward the 
freedmen, and wished to see them get on in the world, 
and particularly to take up some occupation for a living 
and to turn their hands to some work, and that efforts 
were being made among the farmers near his home to 
induce them to engage for the year at regular and fair 
living wages. He did not know, he stated, of any com- 
bination to keep down wages or establish any rate 
which the people did not think fair. 

He further stated that where he had been the peo- 
ple were not only willing that the blacks should be 
educated, but were of the opinion that this would be 
for the advantage of both the blacks and the whites. 
He personally did not think that the black man was 
as capable of acquiring knowledge as the white man, 
though some were more apt than others, and he had 
known some to acquire knowledge in their trade or 
profession, and had had certain ones of his own who 
had learned to read and write very well. 

He had heard of no combination having in view the 



652 ROBERT E. LEE 

disturbance of the peace or any improper or unlawful 
acts, and had seen no evidence of it. On the contrary, 
wherever he had been they were "quiet and orderly, 
not disposed to work, or, rather, not disposed to any 
continuous engagement to work, but just very short 
jobs to provide them with the immediate means of 
subsistence," as they tended to "look rather to the 
present time than to the future." 

In response to further questions, he stated that he 
did not believe in an amendment to the Constitution 
extending the suffrage to the colored people, as it 
"would open the door to a good deal of demagogism 
and lead to embarrassments in various ways. Wliat 
the future may prove," he added, "how intelligent 
they may become, with what eyes they may look upon 
the interests of the State in which they may reside, I 
cannot say more than you can." 

When further pressed on the subject, in reply to 
direct questions, he expressed as his opinion that it 
would be for the benefit of Virginia, both then and in 
the future, if she were relieved of the burden of her 
colored population by their moving to the Cotton 
States. "That is no new opinion with me," he added. 
"I have always thought so, and have always been in 
favor of emancipation — gradual emancipation." 

In reply to the question whether "in the event of a 
war between the United States and any foreign power, 
such as England or France, if there should be held out 
to the secession portion of the people of Virginia or the 
other recently 'rebel' States a fair prospect of gaining 
their independence and shaking off the government of 



AFTER THE WAR 653 

the United States/' it was or was not his opinion that 
they would "avail themselves of that opportunity/' 
he declared that he could not speak with any certainty 
on that point ; that he did not know how far they might 
be actuated by their feelings, and had nothing whatever 
to base his opinion on; but that, so far as he knew, 
they contemplated nothing of the kind at that time; 
and that, so far from having heard in his intercourse 
expressions of a hope that such a war might break out, 
he had heard those with whom he associated express 
the hope that the country might not be led into 
a war. 

Having been pressed at this point by the question, 
what, in such an event, would be his own choice, he 
settled the matter by saying quietly, ''I have no dis- 
position now to do it, and I never have had." 

On the point whether, during the Civil War, it was 
not contemplated by the government of the Confeder- 
acy to form an alliance with some foreign nation, if 
possible, he stated his belief that it had been their 
wish to do so if they could, as it had been their wish 
to have the Confederate Government recognized as 
an independent government, but that he knew nothing 
of the policy of the government, and "had no hand or 
part in it." 

Touching the question as to the bearing of the peo- 
ple in the South toward the people of the North, he 
stated as his opinion that they accepted frankly the 
results of the war; that they were endeavoring to work 
and improve their conditions; and that their relation 
to Northerners who went down there would depend 



654 ROBERT E. LEE 

upon the personal attitude of the latter and their 
manner of conducting themselves; that they felt that 
the North could afford to be generous, and their gen- 
erosity and liberality toward the entire South would 
be the surest and the speediest means of regaining 
their good opinion. 

The questions then turned upon the political views of 
the Southern people, and he was asked whether, if the 
Southern States were again given the opportunity of 
seceding, as they had been given under Mr. Buchanan, 
they would, in his opinion, avail themselves of that 
opportunity. He thought that this would depend upon 
the circumstances existing at the time, and that they 
might do so if they thought that it was to their interest; 
but he did not know of any deep-seated dislike or dis- 
content against the government of the United States 
among the ' ' secessionists ' ' generally. He believed that 
they would perform all the duties that they were re- 
quired to perform, and that the policy of President 
Johnson would naturally result in restoring the ''old 
feeling," and in improving the material interests of the 
country. 

Possibly with a view to entangle him the question 
was put to him whether "it would be practicable to 
convict a man in Virginia of treason for having taken 
part in this rebellion against the government, by a 
Virginia jury, without picking it with direct reference 
to a verdict of guilty." To this he replied : ''On that 
point I have no knowledge, and I do not know what 
they would consider treason against the United States, 
if you refer to past acts." 



AFTER THE WAR 655 

He was then asked a more direct question, which, 
indeed, discovered the object of the entire inquisition: 
''Suppose a juiy was empanelled in your own neigh- 
borhood, taken by lot, would it be possible to convict, 
for instance, Jeff Davis for having levied war upon the 
United States, and thus having committed the crime 
of treason? His reply was: "I think it is very proba- 
ble that they would not consider he had committed 
treason." 

This was interesting, and the examination was pressed 
as follows: Q. Suppose the jury should be clearly and 
plainly instructed by the court that such an act of war 
upon the part of Mr. Davis, or any other leading man, 
constituted in itself the crime of treason under the Con- 
stitution of the United States, would the jury be likely 
to heed that instruction, and, if the facts were plainly 
before them, commit the offender? A. Ido not know, 
sir, what they would do on that question. 

Q. They do not generally suppose that it was trea- 
son against the United States, do they? A. I do not 
think that they so consider it. 

Q. In what light would they view it? ^\Tiat would 
be the excuse or justification? How would they es- 
cape in their own mind? I refer to the past. I am 
referring to the past and the feelings they would have. 
A. So far as I know, they look upon the action of the 
State in withdrawing itself from the government of 
the United States as carrying the individuals of the 
State along with it; that the State was responsible 
for the act, not the individuals, and that the ordinance 
of secession, so called, or those acts of the State which 



656 ROBERT E. LEE 

recognized a condition of war between the State and 
the general government, stood as their justification 
for their bearing arms against the government of the 
United States. Yes, sir, I think they would consider 
the act of the State as legitimate ; that they were merely 
using the reserved rights, which they had a right to do. 

Q. State, if you please — and if you are disinclined 
to answer the question you need not do so — what your 
own personal views on that question are. A. That 
was my view, that the act of Virginia, in withdrawing 
herself from the United States, carried me along as a 
citizen of Virginia, and that her laws and her acts were 
binding on me. 

Q. All that you felt to be your justification in taking 
the course you did? 

A. Yes, sir. 

In this he had set forth the whole principle on which 
the South stood. He repudiated the idea that he had 
ever stated that he had been "wheedled or cheated" 
into his course by politicians. ''I may have said," he 
explained, "and may have believed, that the positions 
of the two sections which they held to each other was 
brought about by the politicians of the country; that 
the great masses of the people, if they understood the 
real questions, would have avoided it; but not that I 
had been individually wheedled by the politicians. . . . 
I may have said that, but I do not recollect it ; but I 
did believe at the time that it was an unnecessary con- 
dition of affairs and might have been avoided if for- 
bearance and wisdom had been practised on both 
sides." 



AFTER THE WAR 657 

Having failed to entangle him in admissions of trea- 
son, one more ground for hope still remained. The 
inquisitors hoped to connect him and Mr. Davis with 
the cruelties charged to have been practised in South- 
ern prisons. Accordingly, he was examined as to what 
knowledge he had of the cruelties practised toward the 
Union prisoners at Libby Prison and on Belle Isle. His 
answer was complete: "I never knew that any cruelty 
was practised, and I have no reason to believe that it 
was practised. I can believe, and have reason to be- 
lieve, that privations may have been experienced by the 
prisoners, because I know that provisions and shelter 
could not be provided for them." 

Q. Were you not aware that the prisoners were dying 
from cold and starvation? 

A. I was not. 

"I desire that you will speak your mind fully and 
freely on this subject," said his questioner (Mr. How- 
ard), "for it is useless to conceal from you the fact that 
there seems to have been created a sad feelii^g in the 
hearts of the people at the North." To this Lee replied : 
"As regards myself, I never had any control over the 
prisoners, except those that were captured on the field 
of battle, when it was then my business to send them 
to Richmond, to the proper officer, who was then the 
provost-marshal-general. In regard to their disposi- 
tion afterward I had no control. I never gave any 
order about it. It was entirely in the hands of the 
War Department." 

Q. And not in your hands? A. And not in mine. 

Q. Did these scenes come to your knowledge at all? 



658 ROBERT E. LEE 

A. Never. No report was ever made to me about 
them. There was no' call for any to be made to me. 
I did hear — it was mere hearsay — that statements had 
been made to the War Department, and that every- 
thing had been done to relieve them that could be 
done, even finally so far as to offer to send them to 
some other points — Charleston was one point named — 
if they would be received by the United States author- 
ities and taken to their homes; but whether this is true 
or not I do not know. It was merely a report that I 
heard. 

Q. Were you in the same ignorance of the scenes at 
Andersonville and Salisbury? A. I never knew the 
commandant at Andersonville until I saw by the papers, 
after the cessation of hostilities, that Captain Wirz had 
been arrested on that account, nor do I know now who 
commanded at Salisbury. 

Q. And of course you know nothing of the scenes of 
cruelty about which complaints have been made at 
those places? A. Nothing in the world, as I said be- 
fore. I suppose they suffered from the want of ability 
on the part of the Confederate States to supply their 
wants. At the very beginning of the war I knew that 
there was suffering of prisoners on both sides, but as 
far as I could I did everything in my power to relieve 
them and to establish the cartel which was established. 

Q. (By Mr. Blow.) It has been frequently asserted 
that the Confederate soldiers feel more kindly toward 
the government of the United States than other persons 
or other people of the South. Wliat are your obser- 
vations on that point? A. From the Confederate sol- 



AFTER THE WAR 659 

diers I have heard no expression of any other opinion. 
They looked upon the war as a necessary evil and went 
through it. I have seen them relieve the wants of 
Federal soldiers on the field. The orders always were 
that the whole field should be treated alike. Parties 
were sent out to take the Federal wounded as well as 
the Confederate, and the surgeons were told to treat 
the one as they did the other. These orders given by 
by me were respected on every field. 

Thus, we have the highest authority — Lee's own 
word — that a wounded foe was treated by him as a 
friend. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

No part of his life reflects greater honor on his memory 
than that which was now to come. Here, as in every- 
thing else, he addressed all his powers to the work in 
hand. He found the institution merely an old, de- 
nominational college, dilapidated and wellnigh ruined, 
without means and without students. The mere fact 
of his connection with it gave it at once a reputation. 
He changed the little college, as if by an enchanter's 
wand, from a mere academy, with but forty students 
and less than a half dozen professors, to a great institu- 
tion of learning.^ He instituted or extended the honor 
system — that Southern system which reckons the es- 
tablishment of character informed with culture to be 
at once the basis and end of all education. Students 
flocked there from all over the South. He knew them 
all, and, what is more, followed them all in their work. 
He was as prompt at chapel as the chaplains; as inter- 
ested in the classes as the professors and certainly more 
than the students. The standard he ever held up was 
that of duty. 

One of his pleasures was the planting of trees, and 
the beautiful trees about the institution to-day are a 
part of the legacy he left. 

His old soldiers, often at great sacrifice, sent their 

• Address on Lee as a college president, by Dr. Edward S. Jaynes. 

660 



I 



LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 661 

sons to be under his direction, and to learn at his feet 
the stern lesson of duty. But it was he who made 
the college worthy of their confidence. He elevated 
the standards, broadened the scope, called about him 
the most accomplished professors to be found and in- 
spired them with new enthusiasm. No principle was 
too abstruse for him to grasp, no detail too small for 
him to examine. He familiarized himself alike with 
the methods employed at the best institutions, and 
with the conduct and standing of evefy student at his 
own. 

An educational official has stated that of a number 
of college presidents to whom he addressed an inquiry 
relating to educational matters, General Lee was the 
only one who took the trouble to send him an answer. 
He who had commanded armies, 'Hhe lowliest duties 
on himself did lay." He audited every account; he 
presided at every faculty meeting; studied and signed 
every report. 

In fact, the chief stimulus to the students was the 
knowledge that General Lee was familiar with every 
student's standing, and, to some extent, with every 
man's conduct. An invitation to visit him in his office 
was the most dreaded event in a student's life, though 
the actual interview was always softened by a noble 
courtesy on the president's part into an experience 
which left an impress throughout life and ever remained 
a cherished memory. 

To one thus summoned, the general urged greater at- 
tention to study, on the ground that it would prevent the 
failure which would otherwise inevitably come to him. 



662 ROBERT E. LEE 

''But, general, you failed," said the 3'outli, meaning, 
as he explained afterward, to pay him a tribute. 

"I hope that you may be more fortunate than I," 
replied the general quietly. 

On another occasion, a youth from the far South 
having "cut lectures" to go skating, an accomplish- 
ment he had just acquired, was summoned to appear 
before the president, and, having made his defence, was 
told by the general that he should not have broken the 
rule of the institution, but should have requested to be 
excused from attendance on lectures. 

"You understand now?" 

"Yes, sir. Well, general, the ice is fine this morning. 
I'd like to be excused to-day," promptly replied the 
ready youngster. 

It was occasionally the habit of the young orators 
who spoke in public at celebrations to express their 
feelings by indulging in^ compliments to General Lee 
and the ladies, and the reverse of compliments to "the 
Yankees." Such references, clad in the glowing rhet- 
oric and informed with the deep feeling of youthful 
oratory, never failed to stir their audiences and evoke 
unstinted applause. General Lee, however, notified 
the speakers that such references were to be omitted. 
He said: "You 3'Oung men speak too long, and you 
make three other mistakes : what you say about me is 
distasteful to me; what you say about the North tends 
to promote ill feeling and injure the institution, and 
your compliments to the ladies are much more valued 
when paid in private than in public." 

Among the students at this time were quite a num- 



LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 663 

ber who had been soldiers and were habituated to a 
degree of freedom. Pranks among the students were, 
of course, common, and were not dealt with harshly. 
But he let them know that he was the president. 
Wlien the Freedmen's Bureau agent was hooted by 
a number of persons, two students who were in the 
party were "sent home," a phrase which General Lee 
preferred to/' dismissal." One episode occurred which 
showed the strong hand in the soft gauntlet. 

Prior to General Lee's installation as president, it 
had always been the custom to grant at least a v/eek's 
holiday at Christmas. This custom the faculty, under 
the president's lead, did away with, and thenceforth 
only Christmas Day was given as a holiday. 

A petition to return to the old order having failed, 
a meeting of the students was held and a paper was 
posted, containing many signatures, declaring the sign- 
ers' determination not to attend lectures during Christ- 
mas week. Some manifestation appeared on the part 
of certain of the faculty of giving in to the students' 
demand. General Lee settled the matter at once by 
announcing that any man whose name appeared on 
the rebellious declaration would be expelled from the 
college. And if every student signed it, he said, he 
would send every one home and simply lock up the 
college and put the key in his pocket. 

The activity displayed in getting names off the pa- 
per was amusing, and the attendance at lectures that 
Christmas was unusually large. 

Many stories have been told of his method of ad- 
ministering a rebuke where he thought it needed. 



664 ROBERT E. LEE 

One was related by a gallant engineer officer to whose 
attention, when before Petersburg, the general had 
called some defect in the defences which were under 
his charge. The officer assured him that the matter 
should be attended to at once, and accordingly gave 
orders that it should be done. A day or two later the 
general met him and asked if the work had been done, 
and he in good faith said it had, on which the general 
said he would go and inspect it and invited him to 
attend him. To his dismay, on arrival at the spot, the 
work had not been done at all, and he found himself 
in the embarrassing position of having to explain that 
he had given orders to have it done. The general 
said nothing further, but soon after remarked on the 
mettlesomeness of the fine horse which the officer was 
riding, and the officer, glad to get off the subject of 
the neglected defences, explained that it was his wife's 
riding horse, but had proved so wild that he had taken 
it to get it suited to her hand. As they parted the 
general said quietly: '^Captain, I think it might prove 
a good way to train that horse to ride him a little more 
over that rough ground along the trenches." 

I cannot forbear to relate a personal incident which 
I feel illustrates well General Lee's method of dealing 
with his students. I was so unfortunate while at col- 
lege as to have always an early class, and from time 
to time on winter mornings it was my habit "to run 
late," as the phrase went. This brought me in danger 
of meeting the president on his way from chapel, a 
contingency I was usually careful to guard against. 
One morning, however, I miscalculated, and as I turned 



LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 665 

a corner came face to face with him. His greeting was 
most civil, and touching my cap I hurried by. Next 
moment I heard my name spoken, and turning I re- 
moved my cap and faced him. 

''Yes, sir." 

"Tell Miss " (mentioning the daughter of my 

uncle, General Pendleton, who kept house for him) 
"that I say will she please have breakfast a little ear- 
lier for you." 

"Yes, sir." And I hurried on once more, resolved 
that should I ever be late again I would, at least, take 
care not to meet the general. 

Craving due allowance alike for the immaturity of 
a boy and the mellowing influence of passing years, I 
will try to picture General Lee as I recall him, and as 
he must be recalled by thousands who yet remember 
him. He was, in common phrase, one of the hand- 
somest men I ever knew and easily the most impressive- 
looking. His figure, which in earlier life had been tall 
and admirably proportioned, was now compact and 
rounded rather than stout, and was still in fine propor- 
tion to his height. His head, well set on his shoulders, 
and his erect and dignified carriage made him a dis- 
tinguished and, indeed, a noble figure. His soft hair 
and carefully trimmed beard, silvery white, with his 
florid complexion and dark eyes, clear and frank, gave 
him a pleasant and kindly expression, and I remember 
how, when he smiled, his eyes twinkled and his teeth 
shone. He always walked slowly, and even pensively, 
for he was already sensible of the trouble which finally 
struck him down; and the impression that remains 



666 ROBERT E. LEE 

with me chiefly is of his dignity and his gracious cour- 
tesy. I do not remember that we feared him at all, or 
even stood in awe of him. Collegians stand in awe of 
few things or persons. But we honored him beyond 
measure, and after nearly forty years he is still the 
most imposing figure I ever saw. Efforts were made 
time and time again to induce him to accept a position 
at the head of some establishment or enterprise, the 
emoluments of which would enable him to live in ease 
for the rest of his life; but all such invitations he 
promptly declined. To one of these invitations urg- 
ing him to accept a position ''at the head of a large 
house to represent Southern coromerce, . . . reside in 
New York, and have placed at his disposal an immense 
sum of money," he replied: ''I am grateful, but I have 
a self-imposed task which I must accomplish. I have 
led the young men of the South in battle ; I have seen 
many of them die on the field; I shall devote my re- 
maining energies to training young men to do their 
duty in life." ^ 

Even here, in his seclusion, while honored by the 
best of those who had bravely fought against him, he 
was pursued by the malignity of those haters of the 
South whOf having kept carefully concealed while the 
guns were firing, now that all personal danger was 
over, endeavored to make amends by assailing with 
their clamor the noblest of the defeated. It was a pe- 
riod of passion, and those who, under other conditions, 
might have acted with deliberation and reason, gave 
the loose to their feeling and surrendered themselves 

* R. E. Lee's " Recollections of General Lee," p. 376. 



LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 667 

blindly to the direction of their wildest and most passion- 
ate leaders. Those against whose private life the purity 
of his life was an ever-burning protest reviled him most 
bitterly. The hostile press of the time was filled with 
railing against him; the halls of Congress rang with 
denunciation of him as a traitor — the foolish and futile 
yelping of the cowardly pack that ever gather about 
the wounded and spent lion. And with what noble 
dignity and self-command he treated it all! To the 
nobility of a gentleman he added the meekness of a 
Christian. When, with a view to setting an example 
to the South, he applied to be included in the terms of 
the general amnesty finally offered, his application was 
ignored, and to his death he remained "a prisoner on 
parole." 

He was dragged before high commissions and was 
cross-examined by hostile prosecutors panting to drive 
or inveigle him into some admission which would com- 
promise him, but without avail, or even the ignoble 
satisfaction to his enemies that they had ruffled his 
unbroken calm. 

"Seest thou not how they revile thee?" said a 
youth to Diogenes. "Yea; but seest thou not how I 
am not reviled?" said the philosopher. 

He read little on the war, though he at one time 
contemplated writing a history of the campaigns of the 
Army of Northern Virginia in which he had been en- 
gaged, and he began, indeed, to collect the materials 
for the work. He wrote letters to some of his friends, 
and issued a circular to his old officers asking their co- 
operation. "I am desirous," he wrote to his former 



668 ROBERT E. LEE 

adjutant-general, Colonel W. R. Taylor, 'Hhat the 
bravery and devotion of the Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia shall be correctly transmitted to posterity. This 
is the only tribute that can now be paid to the worth 
of its noble officers and soldiers." 

Wlien he applied to the War Department in Washing- 
ton for permission to copy papers and documents in the 
department, the request was refused, and the labor of 
collecting the materials from other sources was so 
great that, taken in connection with his other duties, 
he put aside the work and contented himself with 
writing a brief memoir of his honored father to accom- 
pany a new and revised edition which he edited of the 
latter's ''Memoirs of the War in the Southern Depart- 
ment of the United States." Long states that "he 
relinquished the work with less reluctance because he 
felt that its truths and indispensable facts must ex- 
pose certain persons to severe censure." ^ 

That he did not, however, abandon the idea is ap- 
parent from a letter which he wrote to a kinsman of 
his in the early summer of 1870, but a few months 
before his death. 



Lexington, Va., &h June, 1870. 

My Dear Cassius: I am very much obliged to you 
for your letter of the 1st, and the interest you evince 
in the character of the people of the South, and their 
defence of the rights which they believed were guar- 
anteed by the Constitution. The reputation of indi- 
viduals is of minor importance to the opinion which 

* Long's " Memoirs of Robert E. Lee,' p. 422. 



LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 669 

posterity may form of the motives which governed 
the South in their late struggle for the maintenance of 
the principles of the Constitution. I hope, therefore, a 
true history will be written and justice be done them. 
A history of the military events of the period would 
also be desirable. I have had it in view to write one 
of the campaigns in Virginia in which I was more par- 
ticularly engaged. I have already collected some ma- 
terials for the work, but lack so much that I wish to 
obtain that I have not commenced the narrative. I 
am very much obliged to you for the offer of the mate- 
rials which you have collected. I think it probable 
that I have all the official reports, and I would not 
like to resort to any other source for a statement of 
facts. . . . 

I am, very truly, your cousin, 

R. E. Lee. 
C. F. Lee, Jr., Alexandria, Va. 



It was his diversion to ride his old war horse, Traveller, 
among the green hills of that beautiful country about 
Lexington, at times piloting through the bridle patlis 
the little daughters of some professor, sun-bonneted 
and rosy, riding two astride the same horse; or now 
and then meeting an old soldier who asked the privilege 
of giving for him once more the old cheer, which in 
past days had at sight of him rung out on so many a 
hard-fought field. 

In a horseback ride to the peaks of Otter, in the 
sunmaer of 1867, he was accompanied by one of his 
daughters, who related afterward this pleasant inci- 
dent of the trip. Having crossed the James at a ferry, 
where the ferryman, an old soldier, refused to accept 



670 ROBERT E. LEE 

any payment from his old general, they were riding up 
a steep hill when they came on a group of little children 
playing in the road, with hands and faces both much 
besmeared with dirt. The general, as they passed, 
rallied them on their muddy faces, and they suddenly 
dashed away and scampered off up the hill. A few 
minutes later, as the general and his daughter rounded 
the hill, from a little cabin on the roadside rushed the 
same children, with their faces washed, their hair 
brushed, and the girls with clean aprons, and as they 
passed one of them called out: ''We know you are 
General Lee. We have got your picture." ^ It was the 
epitome of the South : his picture and his influence are 
in every Southern heart. 

His love for children, which, as mentioned before, 
had always been a noted trait of his character, still 
marked his life, and many stories are told of its mani- 
festation, as well as of their love for him. On one 
occasion, having learned during a visit to a friend 
(Colonel Preston) that two little boys in the family 
were sick with croup, he trudged back next day in the 
midst of a storm with a basket of pecans and a toy for 
his two little friends. 

As he rode in the afternoons on Traveller, he was 
often greeted by the children, to whom at times he ex- 
tended an invitation to come and ride with him, and 
this invitation came to be a coveted honor. On an- 
other occasion as he was riding he came on two little 
daughters of ex-Governor Letcher, the elder of whom 
was vainly trying to get her six-year-old sister to re- 

> R. E. Lee's " Recollections of General R. E. Lee," p. 271. 



f 



LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 671 

turn home. As General Lee rode up, she accosted him: 
"General Lee, won't you please make this child go 
home to her mother?" The general stopped and in- 
vited the little rebel to ride home with him, which she 
graciously consented to do, and was thereupon lifted 
up in front of him, and "was thus grandly escorted 
home." When the mother asked the other child why 
she had given General Lee so much trouble, she said : 
"I couldn't make Fan go home, and I thought he could 
do anything." 

Another pretty story was of a little boy (the son 
of the Rev. Dr. J. William Jones, one of General 
Lee's earliest biographers) who, during a college com- 
mencement, slipped from his mother's lap, and going 
upon the platform where the general sat, seated him- 
self at his feet, and snuggling against his knees, fell fast 
asleep, the general sitting motionless all the while, so 
as not to disturb the child. ^ 

One of his biographers^ relates that seeing him one 
day talking at his gate with a stranger to whom, as 
he ended, he gave some money, he inquired who the 
stranger was. "One of our old soldiers," said the gen- 
eral. "To whose command did he belong?" "Oh, he 
was one of those who fought against us," said General 
Lee. "But we are all one now, and must make no 
difference in our treatment of them." Indeed, that 
Lee had never any bitterness is evidenced by an inci- 
dent which General Long mentions. During the cam- 
paign of strategy which followed Gettysburg, when Lee 

1 R. E. Lee's " Recollections of General Lee," pp. 266, 267, 325. 
* Rev. Dr. J. William Jones. ' ,'-^ , 

.v'-^^'l ,■ .. ■■"•[.'.<■■• . 



*^»-'' 



672 ROBERT E. LEE 

manoeuvred Meade back from the Rapidan, as his army- 
passed through Culpeper, from which Meade had re- 
tired, a lady of the place who had been "somewhat 
scandalized by the friendly relations between some of 
her neighbors and the Yankees, took occasion to com- 
plain to the general that certain young ladies, then 
present, had been in the habit of visiting General Sedg- 
wick at his head-quarters, which was pitched in the 
ample grounds of a citizen whose house he had de- 
clined to use. The young ladies were troubled, for the 
general looked very grave; but they were soon relieved, 
for he said: ''I know General Sedgwick very well. It 
is just like hirri" to be so kindly and considerate, and to 
have his band there to entertain them. So, young 
ladies, if the music is good, go and hear it as often as 
you can, and enjoy yourselves. You will find that 
General Sedgwick will have none but agreeable gentle- 
men about him." 

Thus, in simple duties and simple pleasures, un- 
touched by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
he passed life's close among his own people, a hallowed 
memory forever to those who knew him, an example to 
all who lived in that dark time or shall live hereafter; 
the pattern of a Christian gentleman, who did justice, 
loved mercy, and walked humbly with his God. 

The board of trustees wished to give him as a home 
the house erected for him as president. He superin- 
tended the erection of the house — which he always was 
careful to speak of as "the president's house, "and never 
as "my house" — but declined to accept the gift of it 
for himself or family. He wrote to the board of trus- 



LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 673 

tees: ''Though fully sensible of the kindness of the 
board, and justly appreciating the manner in which 
they sought to administer to my relief, I am unwilling 
that my family should become a tax to the college ; but 
desire all its funds should be devoted to the purposes of 
education. I know that my wishes on this subject are 
equally shared by my wife." 

Knowing that Lee and his family had lost every- 
thing by the war, and were without means, efforts were 
made by friends and admirers to add to his comfort by 
increasing his salary; but, while assuring them of his 
appreciation of their kindness, he firmly declined to ac- 
cept anything beyond his salary, either for himself or 
his family. General Ewell made a donation of $500 to 
the board of trustees of the college, with the stipulation 
that it should be used to increase General Lee's salary. 
Lee refused to accept it, and in a clear and forcible 
statement showed the needs of the college. Somewhat 
later, when his declining health had begun to cause his 
family and friends anxiety, he was induced to take a 
trip to the South, and while he was absent the board 
of trustees of the college voted an annuity of $3,000 to 
his family. This also, however. General Lee declined, 
though he must have known, as every one else knew, 
that his connection with the institution was worth many 
thousands of dollars a year to it. In fact, he was above 
not only all sordid but all material motives. In peace 
as in war his high soul by a natural law reached the 
highest elevation to which human nature may attain. 

The following facts appear pertinent as illustrative 
of Lee's character. His abstemiousness was well 



674 ROBERT E. LEE 

known to his army, and, like his piety, was held as an 
example which all admired even though they might 
not always emulate it. His wife stated that on his re- 
turn home from the Mexican campaign he brought 
back unopened a bottle of brandy which she had sent 
along in case of sickness. 

On one occasion he illustrated his ideas on this sub- 
ject in the quiet way that he had, when, before Peters- 
burg, he one evening walked in on a number of young 
officers of his staff who were discussing earnestly a 
mathematical problem, with a stone jug and two tin 
cups on the table beside them. He made no comment 
at the time, but next morning when one of the young 
officers mentioned the fact that he had had a strange 
dream the night before, the general observed that 
''when young gentlemen discuss at midnight mathe- 
matical problems, the unknown quantities in which 
are a stone jug and tin cups, they may expect to have 
strange dreams." 

After the war, when a friend commented on his ab- 
stemiousness, he said that on taking command he knew 
he should inevitably make many mistakes, and he de- 
termined that at least it should not be charged to 
intemperance. 

Lee's personal piety shines so through every letter 
he ever wrote that it would appear almost superfluous 
to mention it; j'et it is quite certain that it was one 
of the mainsprings not only of his daily life, but of his 
genius. That serene mental composure in which he 
worked out his most difficult problems sprang from his 
abiding confidence in the divine wisdom and trust in the 



LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 675 

divine goodness. Not a chaplain in his army excelled 
him in personal piety or in devoutness. The result was 
a spiritual gain to his army which has never been suffi- 
ciently considered in the reckoning of its forces. Time 
and again during the war a wave of spiritual awaken- 
ing swept over the army whose head was the most pious 
and devout Christian that any army ever followed. 

No misfortune ever dimmed for him this light, and 
the darkest cloud only served to increase his faith. 
After the war universal and ever-increasing gloom 
rolled over the South, not from the defeat of her 
armies, but from the profound humiliation in which 
the defeat enabled her political enemies to steep her. 
Yet even amid this, Lee's constant mind, stayed on 
God, suffered no arrows, not the most poisoned, to 
pierce him. 

As illustrating his serene piety, we may take this 
from one of many similar letters to his children: 

"... And though the future is still dark and the 
prospects gloomy, I am confident that if we all unite 
in doing our duty and earnestly work to extract what 
good we can out of the veil that now hangs over our 
dear land, the day will soon come when the angry 
cloud will be lifted from our horizon and the sun in his 
pristine brightness again shine forth. I therefore again 
anticipate for you many years of happiness and pros- 
perity, and in my daily prayers to the God of mercy 
and truth, I invoke His choicest blessings upon you. 
May He gather you under the shadow of His almighty 
wing, direct you in all your ways, and give you peace 
and everlasting life. It would be most pleasant to my 



676 ROBERT E. LEE 

feelings could I again, as you propose, gather you all 
around me; but I fear that will not be in this world. 
Let us all so live that we may unite in that world 
where there is no more separation, and where sorrow 
and pain never come. I think after next year I will 
have done all the good I can for the college, and I 
should then like, if peace is restored to the country, 
to retire to some quite spot east of the mountains 
where I might prepare a home for your mother and 
sisters after my death, and where I could earn my 
daily bread." ^ 

Most men who think, set down on paper, from 
time to time, the result of their reflections. These 
reflections are rather memorabilia for ourselves than 
for others. It throws light on Lee's mind to find 
among his papers thoughts, set down here and there 
for his own guidance, which are so in keeping with 
his conduct that they might almost appear to have 
been written on the tablets of his heart. Among 
them we find these : 

''God disposes. This ought to satisfy us." 

"Charity should begin at home. So says ? No. 

Charity should have no beginning or ending." 

"Those who oppose our purposes are not always to 
be regarded as our enemies. We usually think and act 
from our inmiediate surroundings. (See Macaulay on 
Machiavelli.) " 

"The better rule is to judge our adversaries from 
their standpoint, not from ours." ^ 

■ R. E. Lee's " Recollections of General Robert E. Lee," p. 260 
* Quoted from Long's " Memoir," pp. 485, 486. 



LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 677 

Though Lee was too grave to be generally humorous, 
yet he had a certain dry humor of his own — too shy to 
be exhibited in public, and too delicate to bear trans- 
lation in print. To those who knew him it gleams in 
his letters often with a pleasant glint — as, for example, 
where he amuses himself over his young unmarried 
daughter giving advice on the management of hus- 
bands and children, or when he writes home from the 
Springs: ''You do not mention the cow; she is of 
more interest to me than the cats, and is equally 
destructive of rats." In a letter to one of his sons he 
says: ''We are all as usual — the women of the family 
very fierce, and the men very mild," a picture which 
will be appreciated by those who recall the days fol- 
lowing the war. 

At the end of December, 1868, some one wrote to 
General Lee suggesting that General Grant, then Presi- 
dent of the United States, should be invited to Wash- 
ington College, to which General Lee replied, under 
date of January 8, thanking the gentleman for his 
•letter, and saying: "I should be glad if General Grant 
would visit Washington College, and I should endeavor 
to treat him with the courtesy and respect due the 
President of the United States; but if I were to invite 
him to do so, it might not be agreeable to him, and I 
fear my motives might be misunderstood at this time, 
both by himself and others, and that evil would result 
instead of good. I will, however, bear your suggestion 
in mind, and should a favorable opportunity offer, I 
shall be glad to take advantage of it." ^ 

» R. E. Lee's " Recollections of General R. E. Lee," p. 334. 



678 ROBERT E. LEE 

Though General Grant never visited Washington Col- 
lege, and was never formally invited to do so, General 
Lee had an informal interview with him at the White 
House a few months later, when at the end of April 
he was returning from Baltimore, where he had been 
attending a meeting with a view to getting the Bal- 
timore and Ohio Railway extended from, Staunton to 
Lexington. It having been intimated to him that it 
would be most agreeable to General Grant to receive 
him, he went to Washington from Baltimore on an 
early train, accomjoanied by his host and hostess (Mr. 
and Mrs. Tagart), and was driven imniediately to the 
White House. 

It would be most interesting if the minutes of this 
last meeting between Lee and Grant had been kept, 
but unfortunately nothing is known of what took place, 
beyond the fact stated by Captain Lee in his ''Recol- 
lections" of his father, that "this meeting was of 
no political significance whatever; but General Lee's 
visit was simply a call of courtesy," and that dur- 
ing the fifteen minutes of the interview ''neither 
General Lee nor the President spoke a word on politi- 
cal matters." 

In the winter of '69 '70, the old trouble of rheumatic 
pain about the heart, which had first begun during the 
winter spent "in front of Fredericksburg," recurred, 
and General Lee was sent off by his physicians to the 
South in hopes of relieving him. He was accompanied 
by one of his daughters. Miss Agnes, and his trip was 
one continued ovation from beginning to end. The 
whole population wherever he went turned out to do 



LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 679 

him honor^ and to testify their devotion to him. This 
reception, however touching to him, was, as he well 
recognized, not conducive to his restoration. Toward 
the end of April he turned homeward. "Though the 
rest and change, the meeting with many old friends, 
and the great love and kindness shown him by all had 
given him much pleasure, and for a time it was thought 
that he was better, the main cause of his trouble was 
not removed," and in his letters to his wife he was 
forced to admit that though he felt stronger than when 
he came, and the warm weather had dispelled some of 
the rheumatic pains in the back, he could "perceive no 
change in the stricture in his chest." "If I attempt 
to walk beyond a very slow gait," he says in one letter, 
"the pain is always there." And in another: "I hope 
I am better, and I know that I am stronger; but I still 
have the pain in my chest whenever I walk." 

He returned quietly to his work, and at the begin- 
ning of the ensuing session no one would have known 
that he was not in his usual health. But the burden 
he had so long carried had been too heavy. The over- 
taxed heart at length gave way. His last active work 
was done in a vestry meeting of his church, whose rec- 
tor was one of his old lieutenants, the Rev. Dr. William 
N. Pendleton, formerly his chief of artillery; his last 
conscious act was to ask God's blessing at his board. 
As he ended, his voice faltered and he sank in his chair. 

Surrounded by those who honored and loved him 
best, he lingered for a few days, murmuring at times 
orders to one of the best of his lieutenants, the gallant 
A. P. Hill, who had fallen at Petersburg, after the dis- 



680 ROBERT E. LEE 

aster of Five Forks, till, on the twelfth day of October, 
1870, he that was valiant for truth passed quietly to 
meet the Master he had served so well, "and all the 
trumpets sounded for him on the other side." 

Many places claimed the honor of guarding his sepul- 
chre; but to Lexington it was fittingly awarded. Here 
he lived and here he died, and here in the little mountain 
town in the Valley of Virginia his sacred ashes lie hard 
by those of his great lieutenant, who, in the fierce 'six- 
ties, was his right arm. Well may we apply to him his 
own words, written about the proposal to remove the 
remains of the Confederate dead from Gettysburg: "I 
know of no fitter resting-place for a soldier than the 
field on which he has nobly laid down his life." 

Happy the town that has two such shrines ! Happy 
the people that have two such examples! Both have 
forever ennobled the soldier's profession, where to face 
death in obedience to duty is a mere incident of life, 
and whose highest function is not to make war, but to 
end it. Both were worthy successors of that noble 
centurion of whom Christ said: ''I have not found so 
great faith; no, not in Israel." 

To those of us who knew him in the impressionable 
time of our youth, as, untouched by the furious railing 
of his enemies, he passed the evening of his life in un- 
ruffled calm, he seems the model of a knightly gentle- 
man, ever loyal to duty and ever valiant for truth. 

Well might he have said with that other Valiant-for- 
Truth: ''My sword I give to him that shall succeed me 
in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that 
can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me to be 



LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 681 

a witness for me that I have fought His battles who 
will now be my re warder." 

No sooner had he passed away than the ignoble 
enemies of the South, safe at the moment from her re- 
sentment, set forth anew to insult her people by the 
rancor of their insults to her honored dead. While 
her bells were tolling, the halls of Congress and the 
hostile press rang anew with diatribes against her fallen 
leader who was, to use the words of one of them, to be 
left to "the avenging pen of history." 

But the wolfish hatred that had hounded him so long 
and now broke forth in one last bitter chorus was soon 
drowned in the acclaim of the world that one had passed 
away whose life had honored the whole human race. 
The avenging pen of history had already begun to draw 
the portrait of one worthy to stand beside Washington. 

The world had already recognized and fixed him for- 
ever among her constellation of great men, and the 
European press vied with that of the South in render- 
ing him the tribute of honor. Thus, the only effect of 
the attacks made on him by the enemies of the South 
was to secure for them the hatred or contempt of the 
Southern people. 

"As obedient to law as Socrates," wrote of him one 
who had studied his character well, and the type was 
well chosen. All through his life he illustrated this 
virtue. Among the foolish charges made by some in 
the hour of passion was this : that he believed the South 
would win in the war and achieve its independence, 
whereupon he would be its idol. In other words, that 
he was lured by Ambition. Only ignorance wedded to 



682 ROBERT E. LEE 

passion could assert so baseless a charge. Even had 
he thus imagined that the South might win its inde- 
pendence, Lee was, of all men, the last to be swayed 
by such a consideration. But, as a fact, we know that 
it was at a great sacrifice he made his choice and that 
only the purest motives of love of liberty and obedience 
to duty influenced his choice. The entrance of Virginia 
into the Confederacy of the South threw him out of 
the position to which his rank entitled him. But while 
others wrangled and scrambled for office and rank, he 
with utter self-abnegation declared himself "willing to 
serve anywhere where he could be most useful." And 
it is known to those who knew him well that at one time 
he even thought of enlisting as a private in the com- 
pany commanded by his eldest son. Captain G. W. C. 
Lee.^ Such simplicity and virtue are antique. 

Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley, referring long after- 
ward to his first meeting with Lee, in the summer of 
1862, says: "Every incident in that visit is indelibly 
stamped on my memory. All he said to me then and 
during subsequent conversations is still fresh in my 
recollection. It is natural it should be so, for he was 
the ablest general and to me seemed the greatest man 
I ever conversed with, and yet I have had the privilege 
of meeting Von Moltke and Prince Bismarck. General 
Lee was one of the few men who ever seriously impressed 
and awed me with their inherent greatness. Forty 
years have come and gone since our meeting and yet 
the majesty of his manly bearing, the genial, winning 
grace, the sweetness of his smile, and the impressive 

' Jones's "Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee," p. 164. 



LEE AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT 683 

dignity of his old-fashioned style of dress come back 
to me among my most cherished recollections. His 
greatness made me humble, and I never felt my own 
insignificance more keenly than I did in his presence. 
. . . He was, indeed, a beautiful character, and of him 
it might truthfully be written, 'In righteousness did 
he judge and make war!'" 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

SOURCES OF CHARACTER 

There is something in all of us that responds to the 
magic of military prowess. That wise observer, Dr. 
Johnson, once said: "Every man thinks meanly of 
himself for not having been a soldier or been at sea"; 
and when Boswell said, "Lord Mansfield would not be 
ashamed of it," he replied, "Sir, if Lord Mansfield were 
in the presence of generals and admirals who had seen 
service, he would wish to creep under the table. . . . 
If Socrates and Charles XII of Sweden were in com- 
pany, and Socrates should say, 'Follow me and hear 
a lecture on philosophy,' and Charles XII should say, 
'Follow me and help me to dethrone the Czar,' a man 
would be ashamed to follow Socrates." 

Military glory is so dazzling that it blinds wholly 
most men, and a little all men. An Alexander con- 
quering worlds until he weeps because no more are left 
to conquer ; a Hannibal crossing the Alps and blowing 
his trumpets outside the very gates of Rome; Caesar 
and Napoleon oversweeping Europe with their victo- 
rious eagles, are so splendid that the radiance of their 
achievements makes us forget the men they were. 
Alexander carousing at Babylon; Caesar plotting to 

684 



SOURCES OF CHARACTER 685 

overthrow his country's liberties; Napoleon steeping 
the world in blood, but bickering in his confinement 
at St. Helena, are not pleasant to contemplate. There 
the habiliments of majesty are wanting; the gauds of 
pomp are stripped off and we see the men at their true 
worth. 

Now, let us turn for a moment to Lee. Had we 
known him only as the victor of Gaines's Mill, Freder- 
icksburg, Manassas, Chancellorsville, and Cold Harbor, 
we should have, indeed, thought him a supreme soldier. 
But should we have known the best of him? Without 
Gettysburg, without the long campaign of 1864, with- 
out the siege of Petersburg, and without Appomattox, 
should we have dreamed of the sublime measure of the 
man? 

History may be searched in vain to find Lee's superior, 
and only once or twice in its long course will be found 
his equal. To find his prototype, we must go back to 
ancient times, to the antique heroes who have been 
handed down to us by Plutarch's matchless portraiture ; 
yet, as we read their story, we see that we have been 
given but one side of their character. Their weak- 
nesses have mainly been lost in the lapse of centuries, 
and their virtues are magnified in the enhaloing 
atmosphere of time. But, as to Lee, we know his 
every act. 

There was no act nor incident of his life on which a 
light as fierce as that which beats upon a throne did 
not fall. He was investigated by high commissions; 
his every act was examined by hostile prosecutors. 
His conduct was inquired into by those who had every 



686 ROBERT E. LEE 

incentive of hostility to secure his downfall and his 
degradation. Yet, amid these fierce assaults, he re- 
mained as unmoved as he had stood when he had 
held the heights of Fredericksburg against the furious 
attacks of Burnside's intrepid infantry. From this in- 
quisition he came forth as unsoiled as the mystic 
White Knight of the Round Table. In that vivid 
glare he stood revealed in the full measure of nobility — 
the closest scrutiny but brought forth new virtues and 
disclosed a more rounded character : 

" Like Launcelot brave, like Galahad clean.' 

Had he been Regulus, we know that he would have 
returned to Carthage with undisquieted brow to meet 
his doom. Had he been Aristides, we know that he 
would have faithfully inscribed his name on the shell 
intrusted to him for his banishment. Had he been 
Csesar, none but a fool would have dared to offer him a 
crown. Ambition could not have tempted him; ease 
could not have beguiled him; pleasure could not have 
allured him. 

Should we come down to later times, where shall 
we find his counterpart, unless we take the Bayards, 
the Sidneys, and the Falklands, the highest of the 
noblest? 

So, to get his character as it is known to thousands, 
we must take the best that was in the best that the 
history of men has preserved. Something of Plato's 
calm there was; all of Sidney's high-mindedness ; of 
Bayard's fearless and blameless life; of the constancy 
of William the Silent, tmnquillus in arduis. 



^^i 



SOURCES OF CHARACTER 687 

But, most of all, he was like Washington. Here — 
in that great Virginian — and here only, do we find what 
appears to be an absolute parallel. 

Something must account for this wonderful develop- 
ment. Character does not reach such consummate 
flowering alone and by accidental cause ! It is a prod- 
uct of urgent forces, and such a character as Lee's is 
the product of high forces met in conjunction. Genius 
may be born anywhere; it is a result of prenatal 
forces. A Keats may come from a horse-jobber's 
fireside; a Columbus may spring from a wool- 
comber's home; a Burns may issue from an Ayrshire 
cottage; but it is a law of nature that character is 
a result largely of surrounding conditions, previous 
or present. 

A distinguished scholar has called attention to the 
resemblance between the Southerners in the Civil War 
and the Southern Greeks in the Peloponnesian War. 
He has especially noted the resemblance in certain 
fundamental elements of character between the Vir- 
ginians and both the Greeks and the Romans, among 
the elements of which were a passion for liberty and a 
passion for dominance. He marks particularly their 
poise, a poise unaffected by conditions which might 
startle or seduce. Both, peoples of the South, like the 
Southern people, their successes were founded upon 
their character as a people. It was this poise which 
Lee illustrated so admirably throughout life, a poise 
which, as Dr. Gildersleeve has said, gave opportunity 
for, first, the undazzled vision, and then the swoop of 
the eagle. 



688 ROBERT E. LEE 

Whatever open hostility or carping criticism may 
say in derogation of Southern hfe, and it may be ad- 
mitted that there was liable to be the waste and inertia 
of all life that is easy and secluded; yet, the obvious, 
the unanswerable reply is that it produced such a 
character as Robert E. Lee. As Washington was the 
consummate flower of the life of Colonial Virginia, so 
Lee, clinging close to "his precious example," became 
the perfect fruit of her later civilization. 

It was my high privilege to know him when I was a 
boy. It was also my privilege to see something of that 
army which 'followed him throughout the war, and on 
whose courage and fortitude his imperishable glory as 
a captain is founded. I question whether in all the 
army under his command was one man who had his 
genius; but I believe that in character he was but the 
t3T)e of his order, and as noble as was his, ten thousand 
gentlemen marched behind him who, in all the ele- 
ments of private character, were his peers. 

As I have immersed myself in the subject of this 
great captain and noble gentleman, there has appeared 
to troop before me from a misty past that army on 
whose imperishable deeds, inspired by love of liberty, 
is founded the fame of possibly the greatest soldier of 
our race — that army of the South, composed not only 
of the best that the South had, but wellnigh of all she 
had. Gentle and simple, old and young, rich and poor, 
secessionist and anti-secessionist, with every difference 
laid aside at the call of duty, animated by one common 
spirit; love of liberty, they flocked to the defence of 



SOURCES OF CHARACTER 689 

the Southern States. Through four years they with- 
stood to the utmost the fiercest assaults of fortune, 
and submitted only with their annihilation. 

"The benediction of the o'ercovering heavens 
Fall on their heads like dew, for they were worthy 
To inlay heaven with stars." 

Of them, in conclusion, we may use the words of 
Pericles, spoken over the Athenian dead who fell in 
the Peloponnesian War: 

"So died these men as became Athenians. You, 
their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering 
a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it 
may have a happier issue. . . . You must yourselves 
realize the power of Athens, and feed your eyes upon 
her from day to day, till love of her fills your hearts; 
then when all her greatness shall break upon you, you 
must reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty, and 
the keen feeling of honor in action that men were en- 
abled to do all this, and that no possible failure in an 
enterprise could make them consent to deprive their 
country of their valor, but they laid it at her feet as 
the most glorious contribution they could offer. For 
this offering of their lives, made in common by them 
all, each of them individually received that renown 
which never grows old, and for a sepulchre not so 
much that in which their bones have been deposited, 
but that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid 
up to be eternally remembered upon every occasion 
on which deed or story shall call for commemoration. 
For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb, and in 



690 ROBERT E. LEE 

lands far from their own where the column with its 
epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast 
a record unwritten, with no tablet to preserve it, ex- 
cept that of the heart." 

Through more than twice four years their survivors 
and their children endured what was bitterer than war, 
and, strong in the consciousness of their rectitude, came 
out torn and bleeding but victorious, having saved 
constitutional government for the Union. Such forti- 
tude, such courage, and sublime constancy cannot be 
in vain. The blood of patriots is the seed of libertj^ 
The history of their valor and their fortitude in 
defence of constitutional liberty is the heritage of the 
South, a heritage in which the North will one day be 
proud to claim a share, as she will be the sharer in 
their work. 

No better words can be used in closing this rec- 
ord than Lee's own words after the battle of Gettys- 
burg : 

''They deserved success so far as it can be deserved 
by heroic valor and fortitude. More may have been 
required of them than they were able to perform; but 
my admiration for their noble qualities and confidence 
in their ability to cope successfully with the enemy 
have suffered no abatement from the issue of this pro- 
tracted and sanguinary conflict." 

Some day, doubtless, there will stand in the nation's 
capital a great monument to Lee, erected not only by 
the Southern people, whose glory it is that he was the 
fruit of their civilization and the leader of their armies, 
but by the American people, whose pride it will be that 



SOURCES OF CHARACTER 691 

he was their fellow citizen. Meantime, he has a nobler 
monument than can be built of marble or of brass. 
His monument is the adoration of the South; his shrine 
is in every Southern heart. 






1^ 



APPENDIXES 



; 






APPENDIX A 

lee's order for the battle of Gaines's mill 

Head-quarters Army of Northern Virginia, 

June 24, 1862. 
General Orders No. 75. 

1. General Jackson's command will proceed to-morrow from 
Ashland toward the Slash Church, and encamp at some con- 
venient point west of the Central Railroad. Branch's Brigade, 
of A. P. Hill's Division, will also to-morrow evening take position 
on the Chickahominy near Half-Sink. At three o'clock Thurs- 
day morning, 26th inst., General Jackson will advance on the 
road leading to Pole Green Church, communicating his march 
to General Branch, who will immediately cross the Chickahominy 
and take the road leading to Mechanicsville. As soon as the 
movements of these columns are discovered, General A. P. Hill, 
with the rest of his division, will cross the Chickahominy near 
Meadow Bridge and move directly upon Mechanicsville. To 
aid his advance the heavy batteries on the Chickahominy will, 
at the proper time, open upon the batteries at Mechanicsville. 
The enemy being driven from Mechanicsville and the passage 
across the bridge opened, General Longstreet, with his division 
and that of General D. H. Hill, will cross the Chickahominy at 
or near that point. General D. H. Hill moving to the support of 
Jackson and General Longstreet supporting General A. P. Hill. 
The four divisions — keeping in communication with each other, 
and moving en echelon on separate roads, if practicable, the left 
division in advance, with skirmishers and sharp-shooters extend- 
ing their front — will sweep down the Chickahominy and en- 
deavor to drive the enemy from his position above New Bridge, 

695 



696 APPENDIX A 

General Jackson bearing well to his left, turning Beaver Dam 
Creek, and taking the direction toward Cold Harbor. They 
will then press forward toward the York River Railroad, closing 
upon the enemy's rear and forcing him down the Chickahominy. 
Any advance of the enemy toward Richmond will be prevented 
by vigorously following his rear and crippling and arresting his 
progress. 

2. The divisions under Generals Huger and Magruder will 
hold their positions in front of the enemy against attack and make 
such demonstrations on Thursday as to discover his operations. 
Should opportunity offer, the feint will be converted into a real 
attack, and should an abandonment of his entrenchments by the 
enemy be discovered, he will be closely pursued. 

3. The 3d Virginia Cavalry will observe the Charles City 
Road. The 5th Virginia, the 1st North Carolina, and the Hamp- 
ton Legion (cavalry) will observe the Darbytown, Varina, and 
Osborne Roads. Should a movement of the enemy down the 
Chickahominy be discovered, they will close upon his flank and 
endeavor to arrest his march. 

4. General Stuart with the 1st, 4th, and 9th Virginia Cavalry, 
the cavalry of Cobb's Legion, and the Jeff Davis Legion, will 
cross the Chickahominy to-morrow and take position to the left 
of General Jackson's line of march. The main body will be 
held in reserve with scouts well extended to the front and left. 
General Stuart will keep General Jackson informed of the move- 
ments of the enemy on his left, and will co-operate with him in 
his advance. The 10th Virginia Cavalry, Colonel Davis, will 
remain on the Nine Mile Road. 

5. General Ransom's Brigade, of General Holmes's command, 
will be placed in reserve on the Williamsburg road by General 
Huger, to whom he will report for orders. 

6. Commanders of divisions will cause their commands to be 
provided with three days' cooked rations. The necessary am- 
bulances and ordnance trains will be ready to accompany the 
divisions and receive orders from their respective commanders. 
Officers in charge of all trains will invariably remain with them. 



APPENDIX A 697 

Batteries and wagons will keep on the right of the road. The 
chief engineer, Major Stevens, will assign engineer officers to 
each division, whose duty it will be to make provision for over- 
coming all difficulties to the progress of the troops. The staff 
departments will give the necessary instructions to facilitate the 
movements herein directed. 
By command of General Lee. 

(Signed) R. H. Chilton, 

Assistant Adjutant-General. 



APPENDIX B 

EXTRACTS FROM LETTER TO AUTHOR FROM GENERAL 
MARCUS J. WRIGHT 

Washington, September 26, 1907. 
******** 

The military population (men between eighteen and forty- 
five years old, not exempt by law) of the Northern States in 1860 
was 3,769,020, omitting California, Colorado, Dakota, District 
of Columbia, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Wash- 
ington Territory, and West Virginia, not given in the tables, but 
which may be stated as aggregating 135,627. This, added to 
3,769,020, the military population of eighteen Northern States, 
makes a total of 3,904,647 subject to military duty in the States 
and Territories of the North. 

The military population of the Southern States (exclusive 
of Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) in 1860 was 1,064,193. 
Deducting from this number the 86,000 that entered the Federal 
service and 80,000, the estimated number of Union men who 
did not take up arms, there remained to the Confederacy 898,184 
men capable of bearing arms from which to draw. 

It stands thus: 

Military population of the North .... 3,904,647 
Military population of the South .... 898,184 

Difference in favor of the North . . . 3,006,463 

The military population in 1860: 

Of Kentucky 180,589 

Of Maryland 102,715 

Of Missouri 232,781 

516,085 
698 



APPENDIX B 699 

These three States gave to the Federal army 231,509 men. 
Of these 190,744 were whites and 40,765 were negroes. 

An official published statement of the Adjutant- General of 
the United States Army gives the total number of men called for 
and furnished to the United States army from April 15, 1861, to 
the close of the war as 2,865,028 men. Of this number 186,017 
were negroes and 494,900 were foreigners. 

From all reliable data that could be secured, it has been esti- 
mated by the best authorities that the strength of the Confederate 
armies was about 600,000 men, and of this number not more 
thc,n two- thirds were available for active duty in the field. The 
necessity of guarding a long line of exposed sea-coast, of main- 
taining permanent garrisons at different posts on inland waters 
and at numerous other points, deprived the Confederate army 
in the field of an accession of strength. 

The large preponderance of Federal forces was manifest in 
all he important battles and campaigns of the war. The largest 
foroe ever assembled by the Confederates was at the Seven Days' 
fight around Richmond. 

General Lee's report showed 80,835 men present for duty 
when the movement against General McClellan commenced, 
and the Federal forces numbered 115,249. 

At Antietam the Federals had 87,164 and the Confederates 
35,255. 

At Fredericksburg the Federals had 110,000 and the Con- 
federates 78,110. 

At Chancellorsville the Federals had 131,661, of which number 
only 90,000 were engaged, and the Confederates had 57,212. 

At Gettysburg the Federals had 95,000 and the Confederates 
44,000. 

At the Wilderness the Federals had 141,160 and the Con- 
federates 63,981. 

At the breaking of the Confederate lines at Petersburg, 
April 1, 1865, General Lee commenced his retreat with 32,000 
men, and eight days after he surrendered to General Grant, who 
had a force of 120,000 men. 



700 APPENDIX B 

From the latter part of 1862 until the close of the war, in 1865, 
there was a constant decrease of the numerical strength of the 
Confederate army. On the other hand, the records show that 
during that time the Federal army was strengthened to the extent 
of 363,390 men. 

The available strength of the Confederate army at the close 
of the war has been the subject of much discussion. 

Estimates have been made varying from 150,000 to 250,000 men. 

The number of paroles issued to Confederate soldiers may be 
taken as a basis of calculation. Mr. Edwin M. Stanton, Secre- 
tary of War, on November 22, 1865, made the following official 
statement of prisoners surrendered by different Confederate 
armies that were paroled : 

Army of Northern Virginia 27,805 

Army of Tennessee 31,243 

Army of Missouri 7,978 

Army of Department of Alabama 42,293 

Army of Trans-Mississippi Department . . 17,686 

Army of Department of Florida 6,428 

133,433 

Miscellaneous Departments of Virginia . . . 9,072 

Cumberland, Maryland, etc 9,377 

Department of Washington 3,390 

In Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, 

Louisiana, and Texas 13,922 

Nashville and Chattanooga 5,029 

40,790 

These two lists aggregate 174,223, the number of paroled 
Confederates reported by Secretary Stanton. Those who have 
estimated the strength of the Confederate army at the close of 
the war at 250,000 reached that result by adding to the 174,223 
the number of men, 75,777, which they assumed to have re- 
turned to their homes without paroles. If this were true, it 
would appear, taking into account the 40,790 men reported as 



APPENDIX B 701 

paroled at various places, that 116,567 Confederate soldiers did 
not surrender, and were not paroled with the armies to which 
they belonged. 

This is at variance with the estimated strength of these armies 
just previous to the surrender. 

The report of Secretary Stanton is misleading, because it con- 
veys the impression that the 174,223 men reported as paroled 
were bearing arms at the time of their surrender. An examina- 
tion of the parole lists shows that such was not the case. These 
lists embrace men in hospitals, men retired from the army by 
reason of disability, and non-arms-bearing men who sought pa- 
roles as a safeguard. There were Confederate soldiers who re- 
turned to their homes without paroles, but they did not exceed 
in number those embraced in Secretary Stanton's list that were 
not borne upon the roll. 

In April, 1865, the aggregate of present and absent showed the 
strength of the Confederate army to be about 275,000 men. Of 
this number 65,387 were in Federal military prisons and 52,000 
were absent by reason of disability and other causes. Deduct- 
ing the total of these two numbers, 117,387, from 275,000, we 
have 157,613 as showing the full effective strength of the Con- 
federate army at the close of the war: 

SUMMARY 

Strength of Federal army at close of war: 

Present 797,807 

Absent 202,700 



1,000,507 



Strength of Confederate army at close of war: 

Present 157,613 

Absent 117,387 



275,000 

4: :{: H: ^ H: 

(Signed) Marcus J. Wright. 



702 APPENDIX B 



EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO AUTHOR FROM COLONEL 
THOMAS L. LIVERMORE 

grant's army present for duty 

On the Rapidan and James, April 30, 1864 (68 War Records, 

168,198—69 W. R., pp. 195-198-427). 
On the James, May 31, 1864, 133,728 (69 W. R., pp. 426, 427). 
On the James, January 31, 1865, 99,214 (95 W. R., p. 61). 
On the James, February 25, 1865, 98,457 (ibid.). 
On the James, March 31, 1865, 100,907 (ibid.). 

lee's army present for duty 

On the Rapidan and James, Army of Northern Virginia, April 
30, 1864, 54,344 (60 W. R., pp. 1,297, 1,298). 

Two divisions and McLaws's Brigade (estimated 1,253) of Long- 
street's Corps, March 31, 1864, 10,428 ' (59 W. R., p. 721). 

Department of Richmond, April 20, 1864, 7,265 (60 W. R., 
p. 1,299). 

Total, 72,037. 

On the James, January 31, 1865, 57,387 ' (95 W. R., pp. 386— 

95 W. R., pp. 387, 388, 389, 390). 
On the James, February 25, 1865, 63,500.' * 

On the James, March 31, 1865, 56,840 * (97 W. R., p. 1,331 ; 

Warren Court, p. 482). 

(Signed) T. L. Livermore. 

* Colonel Taylor, of Lee's staff, and Longstreet in their books estimate 
Longstreet's command at 10,000. 

^ Excluding the cavalry of the Valley District, the number of which 
is not reported, but probably was about 1,000. (Warren Court, p. 482.) 

^ The number of the infantry estimated at about 7 per cent and the 
cavalry at about 15 per cent more than the "effectives" reported. 

* The result of deducting estimated losses and desertions reported 
and estimated, at 6,760 for March, from number given above for 
February 25. 



APPENDIX C 

lee's report of the GETTYSBURG CAMPAIGN 

Head-quarters Army Northern Virginia, 

July 31, 1863. 
General S. Cooper, 

A. and I. General, Richmond, Va. 

General: I have the honor to submit the following outline of 
the recent operations of this army for the information of the 
department: 

The position occupied by the enemy opposite Fredericksburg 
being one in which he could not be attacked to advantage, it was 
determined to draw him from it. The execution of this purpose 
embraced the relief of the Shenandoah Valley from the troops 
that had occupied the lower part of it during the winter and 
spring, and, if practicable, the transfer of the scene of hostilities 
north of the Potomac. 

It was thought that the corresponding movements on the part 
of the enemy, to which those contemplated by us would proba- 
bly give rise, might offer a fair opportunity to strike a blow at 
the army therein, commanded by General Hooker, and that in 
any event that army would be compelled to leave Virginia, and 
possibly to draw to its support troops designed to operate against 
other parts of the country. In this way it was supposed that the 
enemy's plan of campaign for the summer would be broken up, 
and part of the season of active operations be consumed in the 
formation of new combinations and the preparations that they 
would require. 

In addition to these advantages, it was hoped that other valu- 
able results might be attained by military success. 

703 



704 APPENDIX C 

Actuated by these and other important considerations that 
may hereafter be presented, the movement began on the 3d of 
June. McLaws's Division of Longstreet's Corps left Fredericks- 
burg for Culpeper Court House, and Hood's Division, which was 
encamped on the Rapidan, marched to the same place. 

They were followed on the 4th and 5th by Ewell's Corps, leav- 
ing that of A. P. Hill to occupy our lines at Fredericksburg. 

The march of these troops having been discovered by the 
enemy, on the afternoon of the 5th and the following day he 
crossed a force, amounting to about one army corps, to the south 
side of the Rappahannock on a pontoon bridge laid down near 
the mouth of Deep Run. General Hill disposed of his command 
to resist their advance; but as they seemed intended for the 
purpose of observation rather than attack, the movements in 
progress were not arrested. 

The forces of Longstreet and Ewell reached Culpeper Court 
House by the 8th, at which point the cavalry, under General 
Stuart, was also concentrated. 

On the 9th a large force of Federal cavalry, strongly supported 
by infantry, crossed the Rappahannock at Beverley's and Kelly's 
Fords and attacked General Stuart. A severe engagement 
ensued, continuing from early in the morning until late in the 
afternoon, when the enemy was forced to recross the river, with 
heavy loss, leaving 400 prisoners, 3 pieces of artillery, and several 
colors in our hands. 

General Jenkins, with his cavalry brigade, had been ordered 
to advance toward Winchester to co-operate with the infantry 
in the proposed expedition into the lower valley, and at the same 
time General Imboden was directed, with his command, to make 
a demonstration in the direction of Romney, in order to cover 
the movement against Winchester and prevent the enemy at 
that place from being reinforced by the troops on the line of 
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Both of these officers were 
in position when General Ewell left Culpeper Court House on 
the 10th. Crossing the Shenandoah near Front Royal, he de- 
tached Rodes's Division to Berryville, with instructions, after 



APPENDIX C 705 

dislodging the force stationed there, to cut off the communica- 
tion between Winchester and the Potomac. With the divisions 
of Early and Johnson, General Ewell advanced directly upon 
Winchester, driving the enemy into his works around the town 
on the 13th. On the same day the troops at Berryville fell back 
before General Rodes, retreating to Winchester. On the 14th 
General Early stormed the works at the latter place, and the 
whole army of General Milroy was captured or dispersed. Most 
of those who attempted to escape were intercepted and made 
prisoners by General Johnson. Their leader fled to Harper's 
Ferry with a small party of fugitives. 

General Rodes marched from Berryville to Martinsburg, en- 
tering the latter place on the 14th, where he took 700 prisoners, 
5 pieces of artillery, and a considerable quantity of stores. These 
operations cleared the valley of the enemy, those at Harper's 
Ferry withdrawing to Maryland Heights. More than 4,000 
prisoners, 29 pieces of artillery, 270 wagons and ambulances, 
with 400 horses, were captured, besides a large amount of military 
stores. Our loss was small. On the night that Ewell appeared 
at Winchester, the Federal troops in front of A, P. Hill at Fred- 
ericksburg recrossed the Rappahannock and the next day dis- 
appeared behind the hills of Stafford. 

The whole army of General Hooker withdrew from the line 
of the Rappahannock, pursuing the roads near the Potomac, 
and no favorable opportunity was offered for attack. It seemed 
to be the purpose of General Hooker to take a position which 
would enable him to cover the approaches to Washington city. 
With a view to draw him farther from his base, and at the same 
time to cover the march of A. P. Hill, who, in accordance with 
instructions, left Fredericksburg for the valley as soon as the 
enemy withdrew from his front, Longstreet moved from Culpeper 
Court House on the 15th, and advancing along the east side 
of the Blue Ridge, occupied Ashby's and Snicker's Gaps. His 
force had been augmented while at Culpeper by General Pickett 
with three brigades of his division. 

The cavalry, under General Stuart, was thrown out in front 



706 APPENDIX C 

of Longstreet to watch the enemy, now reported to be moving 
into Loudoun. On the 17th his cavalry encountered two brigades 
of ours under General Stuart, near Aldie, and was driven back 
with loss. The next day the engagement was renewed, the 
Federal cavalry being strongly supported by infantry, and Gen- 
eral Stuart was in turn compelled to retire. 

The enemy advanced as far as Upperville and then fell back. 
In these engagements General Stuart took about 400 prisoners 
and a considerable number of horses and arms. 

In the meantime a part of General Swell's Corps had entered 
Maryland, and the rest was about to follow. General Jenkins 
with his cavalry, who accompanied General Ewell, penetrated 
Pennsylvania as far as Chambersburg. As these demonstra- 
tions did not have the effect of causing the Federal army to 
leave Virginia, and as it did not seem disposed to advance upon 
the position held by Longstreet, the latter was withdrawn to the 
west side of the Shenandoah, General Hill having already 
reached the valley. 

General Stuart was left to guard the passes of the mountains 
and observe the movements of the enemy, whom he was in- 
structed to harass and impede as much as possible should he 
attempt to cross the Potomac. In that event, General Stuart 
was directed to move into Maryland, crossing the Potomac east 
or west of the Blue Ridge, as in his judgment should be best, 
and take position on the right of our column as it advanced. 

By the 24th the progress of Ewell rendered it necessary that 
the rest of the army should be in supporting distance, and Long- 
street and Hill marched to the Potomac. The former crossed 
at Williamsport and the latter at Shepherdstown. The columns 
reunited at Hagerstown, and advanced thence into Pennsylvania, 
encamping near Chambersburg on the 27th. 

No report had been received that the Federal army had crossed 
the Potomac, and the absence of the cavalry rendered it impos- 
sible to obtain accurate information. In order, however, to 
retain it on the east side of the mountains, after it should enter 
Maryland, and thus leave open our communications with the 



APPENDIX C 707 

Potomac through Hagerstown and WilHamsport, General Ewell 
had been instructed to send a division eastward from Cham- 
bersburg to cross the South Mountains. Early's Division was 
detached for this purpose, and proceeded as far east as York, 
while the remainder of the corps proceeded to Carlisle. 

General Imboden, in pursuance of the instructions previously 
referred to, had been actively engaged on the left of General 
Ewell during the progress of the latter into Maryland. We had 
driven off the forces guarding the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 
destroying all the important bridges on that route from Cumber- 
land to Martinsburg and seriously damaged the Chesapeake 
and Ohio Canal. 

He subsequently took position at Hancock, and, after the 
arrival of Longstreet and Hill at Chambersburg, was directed 
to march by way of McConnellsburg to that place. 

Preparations were now made to advance upon Harrisburg; 
but on the night of the 28th information was received from a 
scout that the Federal army, having crossed the Potomac, was 
advancing northward, and that the head of the column had 
reached the South Mountains. As our communications with 
the Potomac were thus menaced, it was resolved to prevent his 
further progress in that direction by concentrating our army on 
the east side of the mountains. Accordingly, Longstreet and 
Hill were directed to proceed from Chambersburg to Gettysburg, 
to which point General Ewell was also instructed to march from 
Carlisle. 

General Stuart continued to follow the movements of the 
Federal army south of the Potomac after our own had entered 
Maryland, and, in his efforts to impede its progress, advanced as 
far eastward as Fairfax Court House. Finding himself unable 
to delay the enemy materially, he crossed the river at Seneca 
and marched through Westminster to Carlisle, where he arrived 
after General Ewell had left for Gettysburg. By the route he 
pursued, the Federal army was interposed between his command 
and our main body, preventing any communication with him 
until his arrival at Carlisle. 



708 APPENDIX C 

The march toward Gettysburg was conducted more slowly 
than it would have been had the movements of the Federal 
army been known. 

The leading division of Hill met the enemy in advance of Get- 
tysburg on the morning of the 1st of July. Driving back these 
troops to within a short distance of the town, he there encountered 
a larger force, with which two of his divisions became engaged. 
Ewell, coming up with two of his divisions by the Heidlers- 
burg Road, joined in the engagement. The enemy were driven 
through Gettysburg with heavy loss, including about 5,000 pris- 
oners and several pieces of artillery. 

He retired to a high range of hills south and east of the town. 
The attack was not pressed that afternoon, the enemy's force 
being unknown, and it being considered advisable to await the 
arrival of the rest of our troops. 

Orders were sent to hasten their march, and in the meantime 
every effort was made to ascertain the numbers and position of 
the enemy and find the most favorable point of attack. It had 
not been intended to fight a general battle at such a distance 
from our base unless attacked by the enemy; but finding our- 
selves unexpectedly confronted by the Federal army, it became 
a matter of difficulty to withdraw through the mountains with 
our large trains. At the same time the country was unfavorable 
for collecting supplies while in the presence of the enemy's main 
body, as he was enabled to restrain our foraging parties by occu- 
pying the passes of the mountains with regular and local troops. 
A battle thus became, in a measure, unavoidable. Encouraged 
by the successful issue of the engagement of the first day, and in 
view of the valuable results that would ensue from the defeat of 
the army of General Meade, it was thought advisable to renew 
the attack. 

The remainder of Ewell's and Hill's Corps having arrived, 
and two divisions of Longstrect's, our preparations were made 
accordingly. During the afternoon intelligence was received of 
the arrival of General Stuart at Carlisle, and he was ordered 
to march to Gettysburg and take position on the left. A full 



APPENDIX C 709 

account of these engagements cannot be given until the reports 
of the several commanding officers shall have been received, 
and I shall only offer a general description. 

The preparations for attack were not completed until the after- 
noon of the 2d. 

The enemy held a high and commanding ridge, along which he 
had massed a large amount of artillery. General Ewell occupied 
the left of our line, General Hill the centre, and General Long- 
street the right. In front of General Longstreet the enemy held 
a position, from which, if he could be driven, it was thought that 
our army could be used to advantage in assailing the more ele- 
vated ground beyond, and thus enable us to reach the crest of 
the ridge. That officer was directed to endeavor to carry this 
position, while General Ewell attacked directly the high ground 
on the enemy's right, which had already been partially fortified. 
General Hill was instructed to threaten the centre of the Federal 
line, in order to prevent reinforcements being sent to either wing, 
and to avail himself of any opportunity that might present itself 
to attack. 

After a severe struggle, Longstreet succeeded in getting posses- 
sion of and holding the desired ground. Ewell also carried some 
of the strong positions which he assailed, and the result was such 
as to lead to the belief that he would ultimately be able to dis- 
lodge the enemy. The battle ceased at dark. 

These partial successes determined me to continue the assault 
next day. Pickett, with three of his brigades, joined Longstreet 
the following morning, and our batteries were moved forward 
to the position gained by him the day before. 

The general plan of attack was unchanged, except that one 
division and two brigades of Hill's Corps were ordered to support 
Longstreet. 

The enemy in the meantime had strengthened his line with 
earthworks. The morning was occupied in necessary prepara- 
tions, and the battle recommenced in the afternoon of the 3d 
and raged with great violence until sunset. Our troops suc- 
ceeded in entering the advanced works of the enemy and getting 



710 APPENDIX C 

possession of some of his batteries; but our artillery having 
nearly expended its ammunition, the attacking columns became 
exposed to the heavy fire of the numerous batteries near the 
summit of the ridge, and, after a most determined and gallant 
struggle, were compelled to relinquish their advantage and fall 
back to their original positions with severe loss. 

The conduct of the troops was all that I could desire or ex- 
pect, and they deserved success so far as it can be deserved by 
heroic valor and fortitude. More may have been required of 
them than they were able to perform, but my admiration of their 
noble qualities and confidence in their ability to cope success- 
fully with the enemy have suffered no abatement from the issue 
of this protracted and sanguinary conflict. 

Owing to the strength of the enemy's position and the reduc- 
tion of our ammunition, a renewal of the engagement could not 
be hazarded, and the difficulty of procuring supplies rendered 
it impossible to continue longer where we were. Such of the 
wounded as were in condition to be removed and part of the 
arms collected on the field were ordered to Williamsport. The 
army remained at Gettysburg during the fourth and at night 
began to retire by the road to Fairfield, carrying with it about 
4,000 prisoners. Nearly 2,000 had previously been paroled, but 
the enemy's numerous wounded that had fallen into our hands 
after the first and second days' engagements were left behind. 

Little progress was made that night, owing to a severe storm 
which greatly embarrassed our movements. The rear of the 
column did not leave its position near Gettysburg until after day- 
light on the 5th. 

The march was continued during that day without interrup- 
tion by the enemy, except an unimportant demonstration upon 
our rear in the afternoon when near Fairfield, which was easily 
checked. Part of our train moved by the road through Fairfield, 
and the rest by the way of Cashtown, guarded by General 
Imboden. In passing through the mountains in advance of the 
column, the great length of the trains exposed them to attack 
by the enemy's cavalry, which captured a number of wagons 



APPENDIX C 711 

and ambulances, but they succeeded in reaching Williamsport 
without serious loss. 

They were attacked at that place on the 6th by the enemy's 
cavalry, which was gallantly repulsed by General Imboden. 
The attacking force was subsequently encountered and driven 
off by General Stuart, and pursued for several miles in the 
direction of Boonsboro. The army, after an arduous march, 
rendered more difficult by the rains, reached Hagerstown on the 
afternoon of the 6th and morning of the 7th of July. 

The Potomac was found to be so much swollen by the rains 
that had fallen almost incessantly since our entrance into Mary- 
land as to be unfordable. Our communications with the south 
side were thus interrupted, and it was difficult to procure either 
ammunition or subsistence, the latter difficulty being enhanced 
by the high waters impeding the working of the neighboring mills. 
The trains with the wounded and prisoners were compelled to 
await at Williamsport the subsiding of the river and the construc- 
tion of boats, as the pontoon bridge left at Falling Waters had 
been partially destroyed. The enemy had not yet made his 
appearance; but as he was in condition to obtain large rein- 
forcements, and our situation, for the reasons above mentioned, 
was becoming daily more embarrassing, it was deemed advisable 
to recross the river. Part of the pontoon bridge was recovered 
and new boats built, so that by the 13th a good bridge was thrown 
over the river at Falling Waters. 

The enemy in force reached our front on the 12th. A posi- 
tion had been previously selected to cover the Potomac from 
Williamsport to Falling Waters, and an attack was awaited dur- 
ing that and the succeeding day. This did not take place, 
though the two armies were in close proximity, the enemy being 
occupied in fortifying his own lines. Our preparations being 
completed, and the river, though still deep, being pronounced 
fordable, the army commenced to withdraw to the south side 
on the night of the 13th. 

Ewell's Corps forded the river at Williamsport, those of Long- 
street and Hill crossed upon the bridge. Owing to the condi- 



712 APPENDIX C 

tion of the roads, the troops did not reach the bridge until after 
daylight on the 14th, and the crossing was not completed until 
1 p. M., when the bridge was removed. The enemy offered no 
serious interruption, and the movement was attended with no 
loss of material except a few disabled wagons and two pieces of 
artillery which the horses were unable to move through the 
deep muxl. Before fresh horses could be sent back for them, the 
rear of the column had passed. 

During the slow and tedious march to the bridge, in the midst 
of a violent storm of rain, some of the men lay down by the way 
to rest. Officers sent back for them failed to find many in the 
obscurity of the night, and these, with some stragglers, fell into 
the hands of the enemy. 

Brigadier-General Pettigrew was mortally wounded in an 
attack made by a small body of cavalry, which was unfortu- 
nately mistaken for our own and permitted to enter our lines. 
He was brought to Bunker Hill, where he expired a few days 
afterward. He was a brave and accomplished officer and 
gentleman, and his loss will be deeply felt by the country and 
the army. 

The following day the army marched to Bunker Hill, in the 
vicinity of which it encamped for several days. The day after 
its arrival, a large force of the enemy's cavalry, which had crossed 
the Potomac at Harper's Ferry, advanced toward Martinsburg. 
It was attacked by General Fitz Lee near Kearneysville, and 
defeated with heavy loss, leaving its dead and many of its 
wounded on the field. 

Owing to the swollen condition of the Shenandoah River, the 
plan of operations which had been contemplated when we re- 
crossed the Potomac could not be put in execution, and before 
the waters had subsided the movements of the enemy induced 
me to cross the Blue Ridge and take position south of the Rappa- 
hannock, which was accordingly done. 

As soon as the reports of the commanding officers shall be 
received, a more detailed account of these operations will be 
given, and occasion will then be taken to speak more particularly 



APPENDIX C 713 

of the conspicuous gallantry and good conduct of both officers 
and men. 

It is not yet in my power to give a correct statement of our 
casualties, which were severe, including many brave men and 
an unusual proportion of distinguished and valuable officers. 
Among them I regret to mention the following general officers: 
Major-Generals Hood, Pender, and Trimble, severely, and 
Major-General Heth slightly, wounded. 

General Pender has since died. This lamented officer has 
borne a distinguished part in every engagement of this army, 
and was wounded on several occasions while leading his com- 
mand with conspicuous gallantry and ability. The confidence 
and admiration inspired by his courage and capacity as an officer 
were only equalled by the esteem and respect entertained by all 
with whom he was associated, for the noble qualities of his 
modest and unassuming character. Brigadier-Generals Barks- 
dale and Garnett were killed and Brigadier-General Semmes 
mortally wounded while leading their troops with the courage 
that always distinguished them. These brave officers and pa- 
triotic gentlemen fell in the faithful discharge of duty, leaving 
the army to mourn their loss and emulate their noble examples. 

Brigadier-Generals Kemper, Armistead, Scales, G. T. Ander- 
son, Hampton, J. M. Jones, and Jenkins were also wounded. 
Brigadier-General Archer was taken prisoner. General Petti- 
grew, though wounded at Gettysburg, continued in command 
until he was mortally wounded near Falling Waters. 

The loss of the enemy is unknown, but from observations on 
the field and his subsequent movements, it is supposed that he 
suffered severely. 

Respectfully submitted, 

R. E. Lee, General. 



APPENDIX D 

EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO AUTHOR FROM ANDREW 

R. ELLERSON, ESQ., OF ELLERSON's, HANOVER 

COUNTY, VA. 

Richmond, Virginia, June 10, 1908. 

Before the battles around Richmond began, my regiment (4th 
Virginia Cavalry) was encamped on the extreme left of the army, 
in the neighborhood of Goodall's. The day before the battle 
of Mechanicsville my company (Company G) was detached 
from the regiment and camped that night at Emanuel Church, 
a few miles north of Richmond. The next morning Jack Stark 
and myself were ordered to report to General Longstreet — for 
what purpose we had no idea, but congratulated ourselves upon 
the fact that we should at least make a good breakfast. * * * 
The evening of the battle of Cold Harbor, General Longstreet got 
each division of his corps and placed them in position. This 
was just before the battle commenced. I stood in the front until 
the bullets were flying thick and fast, and feeling very uncom- 
fortable, and having no business there, I thought I would retire 
to a hill in the rear where I could have the pleasure of looking 
on at a battle without being in any apparent danger. Upon 
this hill I found General Jackson seated entirely alone upon his 
horse. We had been there some time when a shell burst some 
few feet to his left, and in a few minutes a second shell burst. 
Even before this time I had become again very uncomfortable, 
and would have liked very much to change my position, but I 
did not like to show the white feather in the presence of General 
Jackson, who had not winced, but after the second shell had 
burst near him, he remarked in a quiet way, "When two shells 

714 



APPENDIX D 715 

burst near you it is well to change your position if you can do 
so," so we both rode some distance to our right and got out of 
range of the bullets. 

That night General Lee and General Longstreet made their 
head-quarters in Hogan's dwelling. I was sitting on the steps 
of this building about ten o'clock, when General Jackson rode 
up with Lincoln Sydnor, who was his guide on this occasion. 
General Jackson gave his horse to Sydnor to hold and went into 
the house, as I afterward learned, for a consultation with all 
of the higher officials of the army, Sydnor told me that the 
reason General Jackson reached Cold Harbor as late as he did 
was due to the fact that, although he was very near his old home, 
and where he was perfectly familiar with the country, the Yankees 
had cut down so many trees and made so many new roads that 
he actually got lost, and that just before reaching the point to 
which General Jackson had directed him to guide him, he found 
that he was on the wrong road, and had to turn round the 
artillery in the woods and had to countermarch for quite a dis- 
tance, which delayed them very materially, Sydnor told me that 
General Ewell, who was present, wanted to hang him to a tree, 
but General Jackson said it was all right; that we would get 
there in plenty of time. You know General Jackson has been 
frequently blamed for being late on this occasion, and it has 
often occurred to me that this simple reason may have been the 
cause of it, although I never heard it so stated. * * * 

With best wishes and kind remembrances, I am * * * 

Yours, 

A, R. Ellerson. 



APPENDIX E 

REPORT OF THE SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX 

Near Appomattox Court House, Va., 

April 12, 1865. 
His Excellency, Jefferson Davis. 

Mr. President: It is with pain that I announce to your Excel- 
lency the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. The 
operations which preceded this result will be reported in full. 
I will, therefore, only now state that upon arriving at Amelia 
Court House on the morning of the 4th with the advance of the 
army on the retreat from the lines in front of Richmond and 
Petersburg, and not finding the supplies ordered to be placed 
there, nearly twenty-four hours were lost in endeavoring to col- 
lect in the country subsistence for men and horses. This delay 
was fatal, and could not be retrieved. The troops, wearied by 
continual fighting and marching for several days and nights, 
obtained neither rest nor refreshment, and on moving, on the 
5th, on the Richmond and Danville Railroad, I found at Jeters- 
ville the enemy's cavalry, and learned the approach of his 
infantry and the general advance of his army toward Burke- 
ville. This deprived us of the use of the railroad, and rendered 
it impracticable to procure from Danville the supplies ordered 
to meet us at points of our march. Nothing could be obtained 
from the adjacent coimtry. Our route to the Roanoke was, 
therefore, changed and the march directed upon Farmville, 
where supplies were ordered from Lynchburg. The change of 
route threw the troops over the roads pursued by the artillery 
and wagon trains west of the railroad, which impeded our 
advance and embarrassed oux movements. On the morning of 
the 6th General Longstreet's Corps reached Rice's Station, on 

716 



APPENDIX E 717 

the Lynchburg Railroad. It was followed by the commands of 
Generals R. H. Anderson, Ewell, and Gordon, with orders to 
close upon it as fast as the progress of the trains would permit 
or as they could be directed on roads farther west. General 
Anderson, commanding Pickett's and B. R. Johnson's Divisions, 
became disconnected with Mahone's Division, forming the rear 
of Longstreet. The enemy's cavalry penetrated the line of 
march through the interval thus left and attacked the wagon 
train moving toward Farmville. This caused serious delay in 
the march of the centre and rear of the column and enabled 
the enemy to mass upon their flank. After successive attacks 
Anderson's and Ewell's Corps were captured or driven from 
their position. The latter general, with both of his division 
commanders, Kershaw and Custis Lee, and his brigadiers were 
taken prisoners. Gordon, who all the morning, aided by Gen- 
eral W. H. F. Lee's Cavalry, had checked the advance of the 
enemy on the road from Amelia Springs and protected the trains, 
became exposed to his combined assaults, which he bravely 
resisted and twice repulsed; but the cavalry having been with- 
drawn to another part of the line of march, and the enemy, mass- 
ing heavily on his front and both flanks, renewed the attack 
about 6 P. M. and drove him from the field in much confusion. 
The army continued its march during the night, and every effort 
was made to reorganize the divisions which had been shattered 
by the day's operations ; but the men being depressed by fatigue 
and hunger, many threw away their arms, while others followed 
the wagon trains and embarrassed their progress. On the morn- 
ing of the 7th rations were issued to the troops as they passed 
Farmville, but the safety of the trains requiring their removal 
upon the approach of the enemy, all could not be supplied. 
The army, reduced to two corps under Longstreet and Gordon, 
moved steadily on the road to Appomattox Court House ; thence 
its march was ordered by Campbell Court House, through Pitt- 
sylvania, toward Danville. The roads were wretched and the 
progress slow. By great efforts the head of the column reached 
Appomattox Court House on the evening of the 8tU 9Ad the 



718 APPENDIX E 

troops were halted for rest. The march was ordered to be 
resumed at 1 a. m. on the 9th. Fitz Lee with the cavalry, sup- 
ported by Gordon, was ordered to drive the enemy from his 
front, wheel to the left and cover the passage of the trains, while 
Longstreet, who from Rice's Station had formed the rear guard, 
should close up and hold the position. Two battalions of artil- 
lery and the ammunition wagons were directed to accompany 
the army, the rest of the artillery and wagons to move toward 
Lynchburg. In the early part of the night the enemy attacked 
"Walker's artillery train near Appomattox Station, on the Lynch- 
burg Railroad, and were repelled. Shortly afterward their 
cavalry dashed toward the Court House till halted by our line. 
During the night there were indications of a large force massing 
on our left and front. Fitz Lee was directed to ascertain its 
strength and to suspend his advance till daylight if necessary. 
About 5 A. M. on the 9th, with Gordon on his left, he moved 
forward and opened the way, A heavy force of the enemy was 
discovered opposite Gordon's right, which, moving in the direc- 
tion of Appomattox Court House, drove back the left of the 
cavalry and threatened to cut off Gordon from Longstreet, his 
cavalry at the same time threatening to envelop his left flank. 
Gordon withdrew across the Appomattox River, and the cavalry 
advanced on the Lynchburg Road and became separated from 
the army. Learning the condition of affairs on the lines, where 
I had gone under the expectation of meeting General Grant to 
learn definitely the terms he proposed in a communication re- 
ceived from him on the 8th, in the event of the surrender of the 
army, I requested a suspension of hostilities until these terms 
could be arranged. In the interview which occurred with Gen- 
eral Grant in compliance with my request, terms having been 
agreed on, I surrendered that portion of the Army of Northern 
Virginia which was on the field, with its arms, artillery, and 
wagon trains, the officers and men to be paroled, retaining their 
side arms and private effects. I deemed this course the best 
under all the circumstances by which we were surrounded. On 
the morning of the 9th, according to the reports of the ordnance 



APPENDIX E 719 

officers, there were 7,892 organized infantry with arms, with an 
average of seventy-five rounds of ammunition per man. The 
artillery, though reduced to sixty-three pieces with ninety-three 
rounds of anamunition, was sufficient. These comprised all the 
supplies of ordnance that could be relied on in the State of Vir- 
ginia. I have no accurate report of the cavalry, but believe it 
did not exceed 2,100 effective men. The enemy was more than 
five times our numbers. If we could have forced our way one 
day longer, it would have been at a great sacrifice of life, and at 
its end I did not see how a surrender could have been avoided. 
We had no subsistence for man or horse and it could not be 
gathered in the country. The supplies ordered to Pamplin's 
Station from Lynchburg could not reach us, and the men, 
deprived of food and sleep for many days, were worn out and 
exhausted. 

With great respect, your obedient servant, 

R. E. Lee, General. 



ill 



J 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Note. — Union officers are indicated by U.; Confederate officers by C. 



Adams, Charles Francis, Sr., 
45, 67; his opinion of Lee's 
army, 304-305; prevents the 
delivery of iron-clads by Eng- 
land to the Confederacy, 506- 
507; quoted, 508. 

Adams, John Quincy, his views on 
secession, 45, 46. 

Alexander, Gen. E. P., C, quoted, 
293, 336; 340, 344, 423, 569, 
572 573. 

Allan,' Col.' Wm., C, quoted, 159, 
163, 170, 179, 188. 

Amelia Court House, Lee at, 549 ff. 

Anderson, Gen. G. T., C, 402, 
713. 

Anderson, Gen. J. R., C, 165. 

Anderson, Gen. R. H., C, 199, 
207, 236, 270, 271, 274, 275, 277, 
278, 289, 292, 293, 298, 321, 
322, 328, 336, 337, 341, 390, 
396, 399, 402, 404, 407, 420, 431, 
436, 437, 438, 449, 453, 466, 475, 
477, 478, 479, 526, 527, 532, 535, 
542, 548, 550, 551, 553, 554, 555, 
556. 

Anne, Queen, 4. 

Antietam, battle of, 231 ff. 

Archer, Gen. J. J., C, 165, 166, 
258, 278, 322, 325, 326, 330. 

Armistead, Gen. Lewis A., C, 141, 
159, 181, 182, 713. 

Averell, Gen. Wm. W., U., 286, 
386, 445, 469. 

Ayres, Gen. R. B., U., 531. 

Babcock, Col. O. E., U., 573. 

Banks, Gen. N. P., U., 129, 135, 
136, 149, 157, 192, 194, 199. 

Barker, Dr. Fordyce, 577. 

Barksdale, The Hon. E., Lee's let- 
ter to, 589-590. 

Barksdale, Gen. Wm., C, 256, 336, 
713. 



Barlow, Gen. Francis C, U., 278, 
280, 281, 282, 327, 412, 440, 476, 
557 558 

Bartlett, Gen. Wm. F., U., 474. 

Battle, Gen. Cullen A., C, 413. 

Beauregard, Gen. P. G. T., C, 63, 
89, 301, 302, 426, 427, 428, 429, 
431, 447, 451, 452, 480, 501, 512, 
585 

Benham, Gen. H. W., U., 548, 549. 

Benjamin, C. F., Sec'y of War, C, 
586. 

Bennings, Gen. H. L., C, 336, 402. 

Berry, Gen. Hiram G., U., 282. 

Bigelow, John, quoted, 491-492. 

Birney, Gen. D. B., U., 334, 454, 
455, 475, 476, 479, 550. 

Blair, The Hon. Francis P., U., 39. 

Blair, The Hon. Montgomery, 39. 

Bledsoe, Professor, 297. 

Blow, Henry T., 658. 

Boston, Colonel, C, death of, 557. 

Bragg, Gen. Braxton, C, 218, 302, 
365, 518. 

Branch, Gen. L. O'Brien, C, 160, 
165, 166, 178, 695. 

Breckinridge, Gen. J. C, C, 424, 
431, 436, 437, 439, 441, 444, 446, 
501, 518, 593; secretary of war, 
594; 597, 612. 

Brockenborough, Judge, offers Lee 
presidency of Washington Col- 
lege, 648. 

Brockenborough, Lieut. Austin, 
C. 322. 

Brooks, Gen. J. A. J., U., 260. 

Brown, Col. J. T., C, 278. 

Buchanan, Pres. James, 654. 

Buckner, Gen. S. B., C, 124, 302. 

Buell, Gen. D. C, U., 124, 218. 

Buford, Gen. John, U., 323, 325, 
326. 

Bull Run, battles of; see Manas- 
sas. 



723 



724 



INDEX 



Burnside, Gen. A. E., U., 88, 100, 
193, 199, 218, 231, 237, 248; su- 
persedes McClellan and changes 
plan of campaign against Lee, 
253_^. ; loses battle of Fredericks- 
burg, 255 ff.; superseded by 
Hooker, 261; 384, 414, 415, 417, 
419, 420, 421, 429, 432, 434, 436, 
437, 439, 440, 444, 470, 472, 473, 
599, 623, 627, 686. 

Butler, Gen. Benj. F., U., 124, 
384, 385, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 
441, 447, 450, 451, 457, 465, 478, 
482, 484, 499, 509; relieved, 510; 
627. 

Butler, Gen. M. C, C, 435. 

Cameron, The Hon. Simon, U., 

quoted, 39. 
Campbell, Judge J. A., quoted, 

584, 593. 
Carter, Anne, mother of R. E. Lee, 

5, 12. 
Carter, Robert, 12. 
Carter, Col. Thos. H., C, 290, 

570; quoted, 619. 
Carter, Capt. William Page, 417. 
Casey, Gen. Silas, U., 159. 
Chancellorsville, battle of, 266 ff.; 

credit for Confederate victory, 

296/. 
Charles II, offered a kingdom in 

Virginia by Richard Lee, 4. 
Chilton, Gen. R. H., C, 697. 
Clingman, Gen. Thos. L., C, 426. 
Cobb, Gen. Howell, C, 629. 
Cobb, Gen. Thos. R. R., C, 629. 
Cochrane, Gen. John, U., 260. 
Cold Harbor, battle of, 173; second 

battle of, 438 ff. 
Coler, Colonel, C, 511. 
Cook, Gen. J. R., C, 535. 
Cooper, Gen. S., C, Lee's report 

of the Gettysburg campaign to, 

703-713. 
Corse, Gen. M. D., C, 527, 529, 

531; captured, 556. 
Couch, Gen. D. N., C, 287, 292, 

319 
Cox, Gen. J. D., U., 218, 237, 629. 
Crawford, Gen. G. W., U., 477, 531. 
Crook, Gen. George, U., 445, 469, 

528, 552, 554, 557. 
Cross Keys, battle of, 137, 157. 



Custer, Gen. Geo. A., U., 339, 376, 

532, 550. '< 

Custis, Mary Parke, 'h^k marriage 

to R. E. Lee, 18; Lee s letters to, 

cf. Lee, R. E. 
Cutler, Gen. Lysander, U., 325. 
Cutshaw, Maj. W. E., C, 417, 469. 

Dahlgren, Col. Ulric, U., 375, 
376. 

Dana, Richard H., quoted, 381- 
382. 

Daniel, John W., 417. 

Daniel, Gen. Junius, C, 321, 413; 
killed, 419. 

Davies, Gen. H. E., Jr., U., 528. 

Davis, Jefferson, 93, 94; quoted, 
114; 115; his high opinion of 
Lee, 115, 116; 118-119, 131, 133, 
136; appoints Lee in command 
of Confederate forces, 141; 
quoted, 146-147; 152, 199, 
216 ff., 268, 301-303, 325; cor- 
respondence with Lee, 358-362; 
366, 377, 402; Lee's letter to, 
495; 503, 510, 511, 512; notified 
by Lee that Richmond should 
be evacuated, 540; Lee's letter 
to, 541-543; notified of Lee's 
surrender, 578; the interference 
of his administration in Lee's 
plans, 580 ff. ; his confidence in 
Lee, 581; 592, 593; quoted, 594- 
595; his high opinion of Lee, 
596; 605; Lee's letters to, 605 #.; 
608, 609, 616, 642, 649, 655; 
Lee's report to, of the surrender 
at Appomattox, 716-719. 

Davis, Gen. J. C, U., 629. 

Davis, Col. J. L., C, 696. 

Davis, Gen. J. R., C, 535. 

Dearing, Gen. James, C, 426, 450, 
477; death of, 557. 

Deshler, Lieut. James, C, 95. 

Devin, Gen. Thos. C, U., 323, 528, 
532. 

Dix, Governor, 315. 

Doles, Gen. Geo., C, 322, 413, 420. 

Doubleday, Gen. A., U., 232, 233, 
326. 

Douglass, Col. M., C, 232. 

Dubose, Gen. D. M., C., captured, 
556. 

DuPont, Adm. Sam. F., U., 124. 



INDEX 



725 



Early, Gen. J. A., C, 233, 234, 
246, 256, 258, 279, 292, 293, 298, 

318, 321, 327, 330, 338, 370, 412, 
414, 415, 417, 436, 437, 438, 439, 
440, 444, 446, 447, 459; saves 
Lynchburg, 460; sent by Lee to 
threaten Washington, 460 ff., 
468, 469, 477, 479, 501, 705, 707. 

Egan, Gen. Thos. W., U., 483. 

Ellerson, Andrew R., 187; his 
letter to author, 714-715. 

ElHott, Gen. St., Jr., C, 473, 474. 

Elzey, Gen. A., C, 302. 

Evans, Gen. N. C., C, 209, 418. 

Ewell, Gen. Rich. S., C, 153, 168, 
174, 175, 176, 181, 187, 197, 205, 
208; succeeds Stonewall Jack- 
son, 298; 310, 314, 315, 316, 318, 

319, 320, 321, 322, 324, 325, 327, 
328, 329, 330, 332, 334, 337, 339, 
341, 350, 355, 367, 370, 396, 397, 
398, 404, 411, 420, 422, 431, 436, 
480, 546, .548, 549, 551, 553, 554, 
555; captured, 556; 560, 673, 
704, 705, 706, 708, 709, 711, 715, 
717. 

Farragut, Adm. D. G., U., flag 

officer, 124, 505. 
Ferrero, Gen. Edw. U., 260, 473. 
Field, Gen. Chas. W., C, 165, 166, 

400, 402, 403, 451, 453, 471, 475, 

478, 484, 539. 
Five Forks, battle of, 529 /. 
Floyd, Gen. John B., C, 102, 104, 

106, 110-111, 622. 
Forrest, Gen. N. B., C, 505. 
Foster, Gen. R. S., U., 539. 
Franklin, Gen. Wm. B., U., 149, 

150, 170, 180, 212, 227, 238, 257, 

259, 260, 468. 
Fr-isier's Farm, battle of, 178-179. 
r rdericksburg, battle of, 255 ff. 
F-eemantle, Colonel, 633. 
Fremont, Gen. John C., U., 135, 

136, 138, 144, 149, 157, 192, 194. 
x'rench, Gen. Wm. H., U., 170, 

173, 236, 369. 
Fulton, Colonel, C, 532. 

Gaines's Mill, battle of, 173. 
Gamble, Gen. W., U., 323. 
Garber, A. W., 417. 
Garnett, Gen. R. B., C, 713. 



Garnett, Gen. Robert S., C, 99. 

Gary, Gen. M. W., C, 484, 546. 

Gemieson, Major, 7. 

Getty, Gen. Geo. W., U., 397, 399, 
463, 555. 

Gettysburg, battle of, 304 ff., 
320 jf. 

Gibbon, Gen. John, U., 257, 540, 
558. 

Gildersleeve, Dr., 687. 

Glendale, battle of, 178-179. 

Gordon, Gen. G. H,, U., quoted, 
241. 

Gordon, Gen. J. B., C, 321, 327, 
329, 389, 404, 411, 413, 419, 520, 
521, 522, 535, 537, 539, 541, 550, 
553, 554, 555, 556, 557, 559, 570, 
571, 717, 718. 

Gorgas, Gen. Josiah, C, 73. 

Gracie, Gen. Arch., C, 451, 527, 
532. 

Grant, General U. S., U., as a slave- 
holder, 57; as a commander, 68; 
148, 245, 253, 306; supersedes 
Meade, 357, 379 /.; author's 
opinion of his character, 379- 
380; R. H. Dana's description 
of, 381-382; Meade's relation 
to, 382-383; plans destruction 
of Lee's army, 383 ff.; crosses 
the Rapidan, 385; in the Wilder- 
ness campaign, 388 ff., 395 ff.; 
at Spottsylvania Court House, 
410 ff.; fails to destroy Lee's 
army, 429; crosses the Pamun- 
key, 434; defeated at Second 
Cold Harbor, 438; crosses to the 
south side of the James, 447; 
his Wilderness campaign dis- 
cussed, 448; plans to seize 
Petersburg, 449; fails to cap- 
ture Petersburg by assault, 452- 
454, 470 /.; sends Wright to 
strengthen Washington against 
Early, 463; Halleck's depend- 
ence on, 468; compared with 
Lee, 488 ff.; commands com- 
plete confidence in Washington, 
517; compels Lee to abandon 
Richmond, 535; his army at 
Appomattox compared with 
Lee's, 561 ff.; reaches his 
zenith, 566; asks Lee to sur- 
render, 566; letters with Lee 



726 



INDEX 



concerning surrender, 567 ff.; 
generous toward Lee in condi- 
tions of surrender, 574 ff. ; 599 ; 
his desire for peace, 611 ^.; his 
magnanimity at Appomattox 
praised, 638; his noble attitude 
toward Lee after the war, 643; 
677; Lee's interview with, at 
the White House, 678; statistics 
of his armies, 698-702, 718. 

Grant, Mrs. U. S., 611. 

Gravelly Run, battle of, 527. 

Gray, Lieut.-Col., 166. 

Greeley, Horace, criticises Lin- 
coln's methods, 241. 

Greene, General, quoted, 9. 

Gregg, Gen. D. McM., U., 316, 
364, 367, 475, 476, 483, 528, 557, 
558 

Gregg, Gen. John, C, 402. 

Gregg, Gen. J. I., U., 339. 

Gregg, Gen. M., C, 165, 166, 258. 

Griffin, Gen. C., U., 396, 531, 
551. 

Grigsby, Col. A. J., C, 233, 244. 

Hagood, Gen. J., C, 478. 

Halleck, Gen. H. W., U., ap- 
pointed commander-in-chief of 
U. S. army, 192; 197, 202, 212, 
230, 251, 319, 349, 353, 444, 445, 
447, 501, 628, 630. 

Hallowell, R. E. Lee's teacher, 
15-16. 

Hampton, Gen. Wade, C, 64, 412, 
435, 444, 446, 455, 476, 483, 629, 
645, 713. 

Hancock, Gen. W. S., U., 317, 328, 
329, 330, 331, 338, 384, 396, 397, 
398, 400, 403, 404, 412, 413, 417, 
418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 429, 430, 
432, 434, 436, 437, 439, 440, 450, 
454, 470, 471, 472, 475, 476, 477, 
478, 479, 481. 482, 483. 

Hardee, Gen. W. J., C, 514. 

Harris, Gen. N. H., C, 419; cf. 
539. 

Hays,' Gen. Alex., U., 232, 282, 
321 338 

Heckman, Gen. Chas. A., U., 428. 

Heintzelman, Gen. Sam. P., U., 
137, 139, 150, 159, 180. 

Henderson, Gen. G. F. R., quoted, 
48, 57-60, 69-70, 74 n., 75 n., 76, 



77-78, 163, 171, 172, 188, 201, 
212, 214, 220, 235-236, 237, 239, 
240, 247-248, 265, 286, 297. 300- 
301, 307, 347-348, 393, 581. 

Heth, Gen. Henry, C, 289, 298, 
309, 321, 322, 325, 326, 327, 330, 
341, 356, 397, 398, 399, 401, 412, 
439, 471, 477, 483, 535; takes 
Hill's place on latter's death, 
538, 545, 558, 713. 

Hill, Gen. A. P., C, 146, 151, 161, 
162, 163, 164, 165, 166-167, 168, 
169, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 
183, 188, 191, 198, 229, 237, 256, 
258, 285, 286, 298, 310, 315, 316, 
318, 321, 322, 325, 326, 327, 328, 
330, 334, 337, 353, 367, 419, 421, 
455, 477, 478, 526, 527, 535; 
death of, 537; 679, 695, 704, 705, 
706, 707, 708, 709, 711; cf. 140, 

208, 209, 228, 234, 324, 396, 401, 
411, 431, 436, 439, 449, 453, 471, 
480. 

Hill, Senator B. H., 608-609. 

Hill, Gen. D. H., 151, 159, 160, 164, 
167, 168, 181, 182, 185, 221, 223, 
224, 226, 227, 233, 236, 256, 302, 
695; cf. 140, 208, 209, 228, 234. 

Hoke, Gen. R. F., C, 321, 338, 428, 
431, 437, 438, 451, 471, 481, 484, 
498. 

Holcombe, quoted, 16. 

Holmes, Gen. T. H., C, 91, 143, 
177, 178, 180, 181, 696. 

Hood, Gen. John B., C, 146, 168, 
171, 172, 209, 231, 232, 233, 234, 
239, 265, 298, 322, 335, 336, 341, 
346, 365; supersedes Johnston, 
506; 623, 704, 713. 

Hooker, Gen. Joseph, U., 159, 178, 

209, 231, 232, 233, 260; super- 
sedes Burnside in command of^ 
Army of the Potomac, 261 ; Liq« 
coin's letter to, 264-265; def 
feated at Chancellorsville, ^67^ 
Lee's opinion of, 268, 295-296;^ 
defeated at Salem Church, ,i.t/3: 
retreats across the Rappahan- 
nock, 294; is superseded bj^ 
Meade, 319; 339, 355, 356, 378, 
386, 395, 504, 599, 623, 703, 705. 

Howard, Jacob M., 657. 
Howard, Gen. O. O., U., 270, 276, 
278, 279, 280, 281, 326, 629. 



INDEX 



727 



Howell, Col. J. B., U., 504. 
Huger, Gen. Benj., C, 131, 139, 

141, 151, 164, 170, 176, 178, 180, 

181, 183, 191, 696. 
Humphreys, Gen. A. A., U., 292, 

334, 405, 408, 410; quoted, 425, 

427, 429, 438, 442, 485; 524, 525, 

528, 534, 538, 557, 558, 567, 568, 

569, 571. 
Hunter, Gen. David, U., 218; his 

ruthless destruction, 444-446 ; 

447, 460, 467, 501, 627-628, 631. 
Hunter, Robert M., 417. 
Hunton, Gen. E., C, 438, 527, 550; 

captured, 556. 

Imboden, Gen. J. D., C, 322, 445, 

704, 707, 710, 711. 
Iverson, Gen. A., C, 321. 

Jackson, Andrew, 16. 

Jackson, Gen. H. R., C, 102, 110, 
120. 

Jackson, Gen. Thos. J. ("Stone- 
wall"), C, 87, 91, 100, 128, 135, 
137, 146, 149; Lee's letter to, 
152; 156-160; his delay at 
Ashland, 161-168; explanation 
thereof, 171; 177, 178, 180, 181, 
183; his slowness around Rich- 
mond, 185-188; 195; advances 
against Pope, 197-199; sent by 
Lee to circle Pope's right, 202; 
successful in battle of Second 
Manassas, 206 #.; 220,222,223, 
226, 227; captures Harper's 
Ferry, 228; 231, 234, 235, 239, 
240, 246, 249; Lee's letter to, 
250-251; 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 
260, 261, 266, 270, 274, 275, 276; 
dnt by Lee around Hooker's 
ri:;ht at Chancellors ville, 266 ff. ; 
s lot by accident at moment of 
'.actory, 283 ff. ; Lee's high opin- 
ion ^f, 287-288; given credit for 
victory at Chancellorsville, 288, 
291, 297; death of, 296; 392, 
'i58, 488, 586, 695, 696, 714; 
explanation of his delay at Cold 
Harbor, 715. 

Jaynes, Dr. Edward S., quoted, 
660, 

Jefferson, Thomas, 10. 



Jenkins, Gen. M., C, 178, 389; 
death of, 403; 704, 706, 713. 

Johnson, Pres. Andrew, 642, 643, 
650, 654. 

Johnson, Gen. Bradley T., C, 455, 
462. 

Johnson, Gen. Bushrod R., C, 
498, 526, 551, 717. 

Johnson, Gen. Edw. C, 103, 298, 
321, 338, 341, 411, 417, 418, 
451, 457, 471, 527, 705. 

Johnson, Hon. Reverdy, Lee's let- 
ter to, 40. 

Johnston, Gen. Albert Sydney, C, 
28, 124, 380, 392; cf. 360. 

Johnston, Gen. Joseph E., C, 
17-18, 28, 87-88, 91, 119, 123, 
127, 129, 131, 132; assumes 
command against McClellan, 
133; 134, 138; death of, 140; 
253, 308, 392, 488, 490, 503, 504; 
superseded by Hood, 505; 506; 
reinstated by Lee, 514; 515, 516, 
518, 519, 523; surrenders to 
Sherman, 578; 585, 586, 597, 
600. 

Johnston, R. H., 418. 

Jones, Gen. D. R., C, 237. 

Jones, Col. Hilary P., C, 290. 

Jones, Gen. J. M., C, 713. 

Jones, Gen. J. R., C, 232, 233, 
321, 445. 

Jones, Rev. Dr. J. W., quoted, 55, 
498; 671. 

Kautz, Gen. Albert, U., 450, 456, 

482. 
Kearny, Gen. Phil., U., 159, 209, 

213. 
Kemper, Gen. J. L., C, 713. 
Kershaw, Gen. J. B., C, 334, 336, 

389, 400, 402, 422, 438, 439, 453, 

469, 471, 546, 555; captured, 

556; 717. 
Keyes, Gen. E. D., U., 137, 139, 

143, 150. 
Kilpatrick, Gen. Judson, U., 351, 

367, 376. 
King, Gen. Rufus, U., 205, 623. 

Lane, Gen. J. H., C, 258, 322, 

419, 420, 535, 539. 
Lang, Col. David, C, 336, 337. 
Latane, Capt. Wm., 154. 



728 



INDEX 



Law, Gen. E. McI., C, 168, 333, 
335, 336, 402. 

Lawler, Colonel, 77. 

Lawton, Gen. A. R., C, 153, 168, 
232, 233; Lee's letters to, 495- 
496, 603-604. 

Lee, Richard, founder of the Lee 
family in America, offers Charles 
II a kingdom in Virginia, 4, 6. 

Lee, Thomas, grandson of Richard 
Lee, builds "Stratford" in Vir- 
ginia, 3-4. 

Lee, Francis Lightfoot, uncle of 
R. E. Lee, 4. 

Lee, Richard Henry, father of 
R. E. Lee, 4; active in Revolu- 
tionary War, 6-9; 10, 11; his 
letter to Mr. Madison, 44. 

Lee, Robert E., birth of, 4; ances- 
try of, 5-9; influence of Wash- 
ington's character on, 9-13; 
his boyhood character and de- 
votion to his mother, 13-14; 
early education, 15; enters West 
Point, 16; Joseph E. Johnston's 
opinion of, 17-18; marries 
Mary Parke Custis, 18; his first 
service, 19-20; his engineering 
work on the Mississippi, 21; his 
work at Ft. Hamilton, 22; brill- 
iant service in the Mexican War, 
22-27; superintendent of West 
Point, 28; service on the south- 
western frontier, 28; captures 
John Brown, 29; letters to his 
wife quoted, 30-31; his love for 
children and animals, 32-33; 
letters to his oldest son, 34-35; 
manumits his slaves, 37; his 
views on slavery, 37-38; offered 
command of U. S. army by 
Lincoln, 38-^0; resigns his com- 
mission in U. S. army, 40; his 
attitude toward secession dis- 
cussed, 41-49; letter to his wife 
showing his feeling for the United 
States, 52-53; his opposition to a 
dissolution of the Union, 53-54; 
letter to Gen. Scott, 55-56; let- 
ters to his brother and sister, 61- 
62; letter to his wife, 63; letter to 
General Beauregard, 63-64; his 
letter to Capt. James May, 64; 
his greatness as a soldier and 



the resources at his command, 
67-79; receives commission of 
major-general of the Virginia 
forces, 80-81; his reply to Hon. 
John Janney, 81-82; letters to 
his wife, 83-84, 92-94; his far- 
sightedness as to the length of 
tlie war, 96-98; assumes com- 
mand of West Virginia, 103; 
letter to his wife, 103-105, 106, 
108-109; letter to Governor 
Letcher, 109-110; fails to capt- 
ure Rosecrans at Sewell Moun- 
tain, 110-113; letter to his wife, 
1 1 1-1 12 ; failure of his first cam- 
paign, 114-115; designs and 
constructs Carolina coast de- 
fences, 115-118; letters to his 
wife, 117-118; appointed mili- 
tary adviser to Jefferson Davis, 
118; letter to his wife, 130; his 
proposed plan of campaign 
against McClellan, 133, 134; 
offers to assist Johnston, 140; 
placed in command of the Con- 
federate forces, 141; his first or- 
der to the Confederate Army, 
142; meets his generals at con- 
ference, 145-147; repulses Mc- 
Clellan on the Chickahominy 
and at Malvern Hill, 148; his 
plans for McClellan 's destruction, 
152-153; defence of Richmond, 
145-184; defeats McClellan at 
Gaines's Mill and Cold Harbor, 
173; his report quoted, 175-176; 
pursues McClellan and saves 
Richmond, 176-185, 189-190; 
his plans against Pope, 197; 
sends Jackson to circle Pope's 
right, 202; wins battle of Second 
Manassas, 206 ff.; letters to 
Jefferson Davis, 216-219; his 
proclamation to Marjdand fails 
to win response, 220; his audac- 
ity against McClellan, 225 ff.; 
makes a stand at Sharpsburg, 
231 ff.; refuses to retreat after 
Antictam, 240; declaration to 
his army, 242-243; letter to 
Jackson, 250-251; wins battle 
of Fredericksburg, 255 ff.; at 
the zenith of his fame, 262; 
letter to his wife showing his 



INDEX 



729 



modesty, 262-263; wins at 
Chancellorsville, 267 ff.; gives 
Jackson credit for victory at 
Chancellorsville, 288, 291, 297; 
defeats Hooker at Salem Church, 
293; compels Hooker to retreat 
across the Rappahannock, 294; 
his general plan of campaign 
presented in letter to Jefferson 
Davis, 301-303; plans to invade 
the North, 309; not informed 
by Stuart that Meade was at 
Gettysburg, 309; marches his 
arniy into Maryland and Penn- 
sylvania, 309; letter to his wife, 
311; iii letter to Jefferson Davis 
he indicates the need of making 
peace, 312-314; at Gettysburg, 
305/., 320/.; does not charge 
Longstreet with responsibility 
for defeat at Gettysburg, 344; 
Lee's letters to his wife, 351, 352, 
354, 355; correspondence with 
Jefferson Davis after Gettys- 
burg, 351, 357, 358-362; letter 
to his wife, 366, 368-369, 371, 
373; 375; letter to his son, 374- 
375; letters showing condition 
of Confederate army after Get- 
tysburg, 372 /.; narrowly es- 
capes capture, 375; defends 
Richmond in the Wilderness 
campaign, 388 /., 395 /.; 
thwarts Grant at Spottsylvania 
Court House, 410/.; outstrips 
Grant for the North Anna, 430; 
his sudden illness at the North 
Anna, 434; letter to his wife. 
434; wins battle of Second 
Cold Harbor, 438/.; stops Hun- 
ter's destructive course, 444 / ; 
crosses the Chickahominy, 449; 
hastens to aid Beauregard at 
Petersburg, 453; sends Early to 
threaten Washington, 460; his 
defence of Petersburg and Rich- 
mond, 476/.; condition of his 
army during last winter of 
war, 486, 492-^93; compared 
with Grant, 488 /.; letters to 
his wife, to Jefferson Davis, and 
to others, showing lack of sujj- 
plies in his army, 494 /.; too 
tardily given complete command 



of all the Confederate armies, 
510; reinstates Johnston, 514; 
plans destruction of Sherman's 
army, 516; letter to his wife, 
518-519; advises evacuation of 
Richmond, 540; letters to Jef- 
ferson Davis, showing his se- 
renity, 541-543; at "the last 
ditch," 519/.; defeated at Five 
Forks, 533 / ; withdraws from 
the James, 545; his retreat to 
Appomattox, 545 /.; his plan 
of retreat on Danville found 
by Weitzel, 547 /.; at Amelia 
Court House, 549 /. ; at Rice's 
Station, 554 /.; rejects idea of 
unconditional surrender, 559- 
560; his army at that time com- 
pared with Grant's, 561 /.; 
reaches his zenith, 566; asked 
by Grant to surrender, 566; let- 
ters of negotiation of surrender, 
567 / ; fights his last battle, 570; 
conditions of surrender, 574; 
Grant's generosity toward, 
574 /.; Lee's farewell address 
to his army, 577-578; his rela- 
tion to the Confederate Govern- 
ment, and its interference in 
his plans, 580 /.; his letter to 
the Hon. E. Barksdale quoted, 
589-590; his personal relations 
to Jefferson Davis, 596 /.; his 
army's lack of food and supplies, 
600/.; letters to Jefferson Davis 
quoted, 605 /.; his freedom 
from political ambition, 608- 
609, 643; Senator Hill's eulogy 
of, 609; letter to Grant regard- 
ing military convention, 613- 
614; Lee's clemency, 617-635; 
letters to his wife, to G. W. C. 
Lee, and others, 619 /.; his 
general order from Chambers- 
burg on invading Pennsylvania, 
forbidding devastation, 632-633; 
Lee's supreme greatness in de- 
feat, 636 /.; his noble dignity 
after the war, 642 /.; uses his 
influence for the re-establish- 
ment of the Union, 643, 644/.; 
the devotion of his soldiers to, 
645-646; refuses governorship 
of Virginia, 647; refuses com- 



730 



INDEX 



mercial offers, 647-648, 600; 
accepts presidency of Washing- 
ton College, 648; feeling in the 
North against, 649 ff.; his ex- 
amination by the committee of 
Congress, 650^.; his views on 
negro suffrage, 652; his own 
views on secession, 656; as col- 
lege president, 660 ^. ; author's 
impression of his personal ap- 
pearance, 665-666; plans writ- 
ing a history of the campaigns 
of his army, 667 ff. ; his love for 
children, Q>70 ff.; his piety, 675- 
676; his humor, 677; his inter- 
view with Grant at the White 
House, 678; illness and death 
of, 678 ff.; Viscount Wolseley's 
high opinion of, 682-683; his 
character, 684-691; his order 
for the battle of Gaines's Mill, 
quoted, 695-697; statistics of 
his armies, 698-702; his report 
of the Gettysburg campaign, 
703-713; his report of the sur- 
render at Appomattox, 716-719. 

Lee, Anne, sister of R. E. Lee, 6. 

Lee, Mildred, sister of R. E. Lee, 6. 

Lee, Henry, brother of R. E. Lee, 
6, 11. 

Lee, Charles Carter, brother of 
R. E. Lee, 6. 

Lee, Sidney Smith, brother of 
R. E. Lee, 6, 565. 

Lee, Agnes, daughter of R. E. Lee, 
678. 

Lee, Gen. G. W. C, C, son of 
R. E. Lee, 63, 84, 471, 546; 
captured, 548-549, 556; 551, 
555, 596; Lee's letter to, 619- 
620; 625-626, 682, 717. 

Lee, Gen. W. H. F., C, son of 
R. E. Lee, 269, 369, 455, 471, 
476, 552, 625, 717. 

Lee, R. E., son of Robert E. Lee, 
quoted, 624-625, 666, 675-676, 
677, 678. 

Lee, Gen. Fitzhugh, C, nephew of 
R. E. Lee, quoted, 115; 276, 277, 
278, 279, 316, 374, 408, 435, 437, 
439, 444, 446, 456, 466, 471, 511, 
525, 526, 527, 528, 529, 530, 532, 
550, 552, 553, 556, 558, 562, 571, 
712,718. 



Lee, Gen. Charles, quoted, 15. 

Lee, C. F., Jr., Lee's letter to, 668- 
669. 

Lee, Gen. Stephen D., C, quoted, 
240; 241. 

Lee, Adm. S. P., U., 427. 

Leigh, Maj. Watkins, C, 285. 

Letcher, Gov. John, Lee's letters 
to, 109-110, 644. 

Lewis, Gen. Wtu. G., C, 431. 

Lincoln, Abraham, offers Lee 
chief command of Union forces, 
39-40; 92, 102, 125, 157; \isits 
McClellan's army, 192; 195, 220, 
252, 264-265, 295, 302, 377, 378; 
appoints Grant in command of 
U. S. army, .381; 383, 456, 468, 
502, 503, 510, 550, 578, 611, 615, 
642; assassination of, 643, 649, 
650. 

Lindsay, Lieutenant, 7. 

Livormore, Col. Thomas L., quoted 
75, 423; his letter to author 
containing statistics of Confed- 
erate and of Federal armies, 
quoted, 702. 

Lomax, Gen. L., C, 511. 

Long, Gen. A. L., C, quoted on 
Lee's resignation from U. S. 
army, 61; 95, 140; quoted, 147; 
151; quoted, 152, 163, 330, 376- 
377, 497, 668. 

Longstreet, Gen. James, C, 131, 
132, 133, 139, 140-141, 143; his 
opinion of Lee, 145-146; 150- 
151, 158, 159, 165, 167, 168; 
quoted, 169-170, 171; 177, 178, 
179, 180, 181, 182; quoted, 183- 
184; 185, 186, 188, 191, 199, 202, 
204, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 
212, 213, 223, 224, 226, 227, 231, 
236, 239, 249, 251, 254, 255, 256, 
257, 265, 287, 298, 299; his atti- 
tude toward Lee, 307 jf.; 314, 
315, 316, 317, 320, 321, 322, 330, 
331; his conduct at Gettysburg 
responsible for the defeat of Lee, 
331 ff. ; his defence of his failure 
to attack at Gettysburg, 344^.; 
365, 366, 387; wounded, 389, 
403; 392, 396, 398, 399, 401, 404, 
406, 407, 411, 413, 436, 438, 439, 
471, 478, 484, 520, 522, 539, 545, 
550, Jol, 556, 559, 569, 571, 573, 



INDEX 



731 



592, 596, 610, 611, 613, 617, 695, 
702, 704, 705, 706, 707, 708, 709, 
711, 714, 715, 716, 717, 718. 

Longstreet, Mrs. James, 611. 

Loring, Gen. W. W., C, 95, 103, 
104, 586. 

McCabe, J. D., quoted, 591. 

McCall, Gen. Geo. A., U., 179, 

McClellan, Gen. G. B., U., 92; suc- 
cessful against Garnett, 99 ff. ; as- 
sumes command of Union forces, 
101; 118, 119, 120; his campaign 
against Richmond, 125-144; re- 
pulsed by Lee on the Chicka- 
hominy, and at Malvern Hill, 
148; his army circuited by 
Stuart, 153-155; defeated by 
Lee at Gaines's Mill and Cold 
Harbor, 162-173; retreats 
across White Oak Swamp, 175- 
177; 192, 19.3, 194, 197, 199, 212, 
218, 220, 221; fails to relieve 
Harper's Ferry, 228; condition 
of his army, 230; fails to defeat 
Lee at Antietam, 231 ff.; fails 
to pursue Lee, 246; relieved of 
his command, 252; Lee's opin- 
ion of, 252-253; 392, 393, 395, 
435, 449, 458, 459, 494, 500, 547, 
599, 622, 627, 699. 

McComb, Colonel, his opinion of 
Lee, 20. 

McComb, Col. W., C, 535. 

McCoy, Colonel, 258. 

McDowell, Gen. Irwin, XJ., 9.0-91, 
120, 131, 135, 136, 138, 143- 
144, 149, 192, 194, 207, 209, 210, 
627. 

McElroy, Colonel, C, 166. 

McGowan, Gen. S., C, 322, 419, 
527, 535. 

McGowen, Colonel, C, 166. 

McGregor, battery of, C, 529, 
531. 

McGuire, Hunter, 244. 

Mcintosh, Maj. D. S., C, 237, 238, 
325; quoted, 342-343, 634-635. 

McLaughlin, Gen. N. B., U., 521. 

McLaws, Gen. Lafayette, C, 177, 
223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 233, 
234, 235, 275, 277, 289, 292, 293, 
298, 322, 334, 335, 336, 337, 341, 
365, 702, 704. 



McLean, Wilmer, 573. 

McParlin, quoted, 442. 

McPherson, Gen. J. B., TJ., 379. 

McRae, Gen. D., C, 535. 

Mackenzie, Gen. R. S., U., 551. 

Magruder, Gen. J. B., C, 129, 130, 
151, 164, 170, 176, 177, 178, 180, 
181, 182, 191, 696. 

Mahone, Gen. Wm., C, 141, 159, 
337, 402, 404, 415, 419, 421, 422, 
439, 455, 456, 471, 473, 474, 476, 
477, 478, 483, 546, 550, 551, 556, 
717. 

Malvern Hill, battle of, 148. 

Manassas, first battle of, 90-92; 
second battle of, 206 ff. 

Mansfield, Gen. J. K. F., U., 232, 
233. 

Marshall, Col. Charles, C, quoted, 
372-373, 572, 573, 618. 

Marshall, Capt. Louis H., U., 
193. 

Martin, Gen. J. G., C, 426. 

May, Capt. James, mentioned, 64. 

Mayo, Col. Jos., C, 531. 

Meade, Gen. Geo. G., U., 232, 233, 
257,270,292,299, 309; super- 
sedes Hooker, 319; 320, 322; at 
Gettysburg, 319^.; superseded 
by Grant, 357, 378; 364; his 
relation to Grant, 382-383; 407, 
441, 450, 453, 454, 465, 468, 476, 
479, 482, 485, 494, 528, 538, 550, 
553, 558, 563, 572, 575, 604, 672, 
708. 

Meade, Rev. Dr. William, men- 
tioned, 18. 

Meagher, Gen. Thos. F., U., 170, 
173. 

Meigs, General, his opinion of Lee, 
22. 

Meredith, Gen. Sol., U., 325. 

Merritt, Gen. W., U., 527, 551, 
554. 

Miles,' Gen. N. A., U., 534, 538, 
558. 

Milledge's Battery, C, 342. 

Milroy, Gen. R. H., U., 136, 149, 
311, 315, 705. 

Morell, Gen. G. W., U., 162, 246. 

Morrison, of Hill's staff, C, 285. 

Mosby, Col. John S., C, 317. 

Munford, Gen. Thos. T., C, 227, 
277, 279, 528, 529, 532, 558. 



732 



INDEX 



Nelson, Col. William, C, 342, 

633. 
Newton, Gen. John, U., 260. 
Northrop, Col. L. B., Lee's letter 

to, 495; quoted, 601-602, 605. 

O'Neal, Gen, E. A., C, 321. 

Ord, Gen. E. O. C, U., 472, 479, 
480, 525, 535, 539, 550, 557, 563, 
566, 570, 571, 610, 611, 612. 

Page, Maj. R. C. M., C, 417. 

Parke, Gen. J. G., U., 477, 480, 
482, 483, 522, 526, 535, 537, 538. 

Patterson, Gen. Robert, U., 88. 

Pegram, Gen. John, 100, 418. 

Pegram, Maj. W. J., C, 325, 532. 

Pelham, John, 257. 

Pender, Gen. Wm. D., C, 165, 
166, 285, 298, 321, 322, 327, 341; 
Lee's high opinion of, 713. 

Pendleton, Colonel, C, 350. 

Pendleton, Col. Alex. G., 187. 

Pendleton, Gen. Wm. N., C, 245, 
246, 254, 260, 271, 286, 331, 559, 
560, 679. 

Perrin, Gen. Abner, C, death of, 
419. 

Perry, Gen. E. A., C, 337. 

Petersburg, siege of, 467 ff. 

Pettigrevv, Gen. J. J., C, 321, 341, 
712, 713. 

Pickett, Gen. Geo. E., C, 169, 265, 
298, 322, 336, 337, 338, 339, 341, 
356, 365, 426, 431, 437, 438, 451, 
498, 523, 526, 527, 528, 529, 530, 
531, 532, 533; his error at Five 
Forks, 534; 535, 541, 542, 551, 
705, 709. 

Pleasanton, Gen. Alfred, U., 269, 
278, 281, 282, 292, 310, 311, 
316. 

Poague, Col. Wm. T., C, quoted, 
331-332, 558. 

Polk, Gen. L., C, death of, 504. 

Polk, Dr. William M., 577. 

Pope, Gen. John, U., 192, 193, 
194, 197, 200; defeated at Sec- 
ond Manassas, 206 jf. ; 218,221, 
366, 367, 547, 599, 622. 

Porter, Gen. Fitz John, U., 88, 146, 
150, 152, 160, 164, 165, 169, 
170, 172, 173, 180, 183, 191, 209, 



210, 211, 212, 214, 231, 245, 246; 

charged by Pope with loss of 

battle of Second Manassas, 252; 

276. 
Posey, Gen. C, C, 337. 
Potter, Gen. R. B., U., 419, 420, 

470; cf. 537. 
Preston, Colonel, 670. 

Ramseur, Gen. S. D., C, 321; 

wounded, 419; 461. 
Randolph, General, 131, 132. 
Ransom, Gen. Robt., C, 159, 265, 

428, 527, 529, 531, 696. 
Read, Gen. Theo., U., 557. 
Reid, Hon. Whitelaw, quoted, 

630. 
Reno, Gen. J. L., U., 209. 
Reynolds, Gen. J. F., U., 102, 107, 

110, 211, 257, 292, 319, 323; 

death of, 326, 328. 
Rhodes, J. F., quoted, 393, 499, 

502, 503, 561, 628. 
Richardson, Gen. I. B., U., 140, 

159 234 236. 
Ricketts, Gen. J. B., U., 207, 232, 

233. 
Ripley, Gen. R. S., C, 143. 
Robertson's Texans, 336. 
Rodes, Gen. R. E., C, 279, 280, 

281, 298, 321, 327, 330, 411, 413, 

419, 437, 461, 704, 705. 
Rodgers, Commodore John, U., 

123. 
Ropes, John C, quoted, 50-52, 

162, 163, 201, 203, 225, 230, 232, 

235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 245, 254. 
Rosecrans, Gen. W. S., U., 102, 

110-111, 308, 365. 
Rosser, Gen. T. L., C, 469, 527, 

528 558 
Russell, Gen. D. A., U., 369. 

Salem Church, battle of, 293. 

Santa Anna, 24. 

Scales, Gen. A. M., C, 322, 330, 

535 713. 
Schofield, Gen. J. M., U., 505, 515, 

517, 518, 629. 
Schurz, Gen. Carl, U., quoted, 271, 

280; 327. 
Scott, Gen. W., U., his opinion of 

Lee, 21, 23, 25; calls Lee "the 



INDEX 



733 



greatest soldier now living in 
the world," 26; Lee's letter of 
resignation to, 55-56; 85, 88, 
189, 544, 577. 

Seddon, J. A., Secretary of War, C, 
308, 492, Lee's despatch to, 
509; 601; Lee's letter to, 604. 

Sedgwick, Gen. John, U., 139, 234, 
235, 237, 266, 269, 270, 271, 275, 
277, 280, 292, 293, 294, 310, 333, 
346, 369, 375, 3S4, 396, 397, 399, 
405, 412, 417, 672. 

Semmes, Gen. P. J., C, 336, 713. 

Seven Pines, battle at, 139-140. 

Seymour, Gen. Truman, U., 405, 
555. 

Shaler, Gen. Alex., U., 405. 

Sharpsburg, battle of, 231 ff. 

Sheridan, Gen. P. H., U., 384, 408, 
433, 435, 436, 437, 438, 446, 467; 
appointed in charge of forces 
guarding Washington, 469; 471, 
479, 485, 517, 525, 527, 528, 529, 
533, 534, 542, 550, 551, 552, 554, 
556, 560, 563, 566, 570, 571. 

Sherman, Gen. W. T., U., 379, 385, 
458, 503, 504, 505, 508, 509, 512, 
515, 516, 518, 523; offers John- 
ston terms of surrender, 578; 
599, 603; his ruthless devasta- 
tions, 629 /. 

Shields, Gen. J., U., 136, 157. 

Sickles, Gen. D. E., U., 278, 279, 
280, 281, 282, 289, 292, 326, 334, 
335, 336, 338, 344. 

Sigel, Gen. Franz, U., 206, 207, 
208, 385, 386, 424, 445, 461, 501. 

Slocum, Gen. H. W., U., 170, 180, 
237, 270, 287, 292, 326. 

Smith, Gen. G. W., C, 139, 140, 
143; cf. 131. 

Smith, Capt. J. P., C, 285. 

Smith, Gen. Wm., C, 321. 

Smith, Gen. Wm. F., U., 237, 260, 
428, 429, 436, 438, 439, 440, 449, 
450, 457. 

South Anna, 430 ff. 

Spottsylvania Court House, battle 
of, 410/. 

Stanton, E. M., Secretary of War, 
U., 157, 700, 701. 

Stark, Jack, 714. 

Starke, Gen. Wm. E., C, 113, 232. 

Steele, quoted, 356. 



Stephens, The Hon. Alex. H., 82- 
83, 93; quoted, 116; 118, 119, 
595. 

Steuart, Gen. George H., C, 418, 
527, 529, 532. 

Stevens, Major, C, 697. 

Stevenson, Colonel, C, 95. 

Stevenson, Gen. T. G., U., 403. 

Stoneman, Gen. Geo., U., 269, 
518. 

Stuart, Gen. J. E. B., C, 29, 91, 
152; makes a complete circuit 
of McClellan's army twice, 153- 
155, 160, 246-247; 174, 175, 191, 
198, 200, 204, 205, 211, 220, 223, 
224, 233, 234, 241, 256, 257, 269, 
270, 276, 286, 289, 290, 309, 311, 
315, 316, 317, 320, 321, 322, 338, 
339, 355; his delay at Gettys- 
burg, 356; 364, 367, 390, 404, 
406, 407, 696, 704, 705, 706, 707, 
708, 711. 

Sturgis, Gen. S. D., U., 260. 

Sumner, Gen. E. V., U., 28, 139, 
140, 143, 170, 177, 180, 231, 234, 
235, 237, 254, 257, 259; quoted, 
391. 

Sydnor, Lincoln, 187, 715. 

Sykes, Gen. Geo., U., 166, 246. 



Tagart, , 678. 

Taliaferro, Gen. W. B., C, 256, 

258. 
Tatnall, Commodore Jos., C, 134. 
Taylor, Col. Walter H., C, Lee's 

adjutant-general, 95, 104, 114, 

163; quoted, 209, 259, 302-303; 

328; quoted, 393, 404-405, 407, 

562, 668, 702. 
Terry, Gen. H. D., U., 451. 
Terry, Gen. W. R., C, 527, 529, 

531. 
Thomas, Gen. E. L., C, 166, 258, 

322, 535, 539. 
Thomas, George A., 88. 
Thomas, Gen. George B., U., 102, 

123, 379, 505. 
Thompson, Major, C, death of, 

557. 
Tombs, Gen. Robert, C, 151. 
Trent, ship, 98. 
Trimble, Gen. I. R., C, ?.32, 341, 

713. . - . - 



734 



INDEX 



Tucker, Com. J. R., C, 546. 
Turner, Gen. John W., U., 537, 
539. 

Upton, Gen. Emory, U., 413, 421. 

Vatjghan, Gen. A. J., C, 445. 
Vincent, Gen. Strong, U., 335, 336. 

Wadsworth, Gen. J. S., U., 326, 
330, 399; wounded, 403. 

Walker, Gen. J. A., C, 321. 

Walker, Col. J. C, C, 232. 

Walker, Gen. J. G., C, 223, 226, 
234. 

Walker, Gen. R. Lindsay, C, 552, 
718. 

Walker, Gen. W. S., C, 414. 

Wallace, Gen. Lew, U., 462, 465, 
502 527 529. 

Warren, Gen. G. K., U., 335, 336, 
367, 371, 384, 396, 407, 408, 411, 
412, 417, 420, 421, 422, 432, 436, 
437, 439, 447, 449, 472, 474, 477, 
478, 480, 482, 483, 525, 527, 529, 
531; relieved of his command 
by Sheridan, 533; 534. 

Washburne, Col. Francis, U., 556. 

Washington, George, 8; portrait 
of, given to grandmother of 
R. E. Lee, 10; his character 
influencing Lee, 9-13, 60-61, 
63-64; as a commander, 68; 609, 
687. 

Washington, Col. J. A., C, 104; 
death of, 108-109, 110, 114. 

Wayne, Mad Anthony, 8. 

Weed, Gen. S. H., U., 336. 

Weems, Parson, 12. 

Weiseger, Col. D. A., C, 473. 



Weitzel, Gen. G., U., 548. 

Wheaton, Gen. F., U., 555. 

Whiting, Gen. W. H. C, C, 146, 
151, 153, 168, 170, 171, 172, 181, 
183 428 

Whittier, Colonel, C, 572. 

Wickham, William F., 351. 

Wilbourn, Capt. R. E., C, 285. 

Wilcox, Gen. C. M., C, 169, 209, 
292, 293, 336, 341, 397, 398, 399, 
401, 415, 419, 420, 439, 455, 471, 
475, 478, 483, 537, 539, 540, 545. 

Wilderness campaign, the, 388 ff., 
395 jf. 

Williams, Col. J. M., C, 321. 

Williams, S., 296. 

Williams, Gen. Seth, U., 567. 

Williamsburg, battle at, 134. 

Wilmer, Bishop, 636. 

Wilson, Gen. James H., U., 394, 
405, 436, 449, 455, 456. 

Winder, Gen. C. S., C, 168. 

Wirz, Captain, 658. 

Wise, Gen. Henry A., C, 102, 
104, 105, 106, 110-111, 426, 448, 
450, 451, 526, 527, 532, 550. 

Wofford, Gen. W. T., C, 336, 402. 

Wolselej'-, Viscount, quoted, 5, 
247, 682. 

Woolfork, Captain, C, 633. 

Wright, Gen. A. R., C, 159, 181, 
182, 336, 337, 422, 473. 

Wright, Gen. H. G., U., 412, 417, 
421, 437, 439, 440, 463, 525, 526, 
535, 538, 539, 555, 558. 

Wright, Gen. Marcus J., C, 75; 
his letter to author containing 
statistics of Confederate and of 
Federal armies quoted, 698-701. 

Young, John Russell, 566. 



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